Various Artists

Player Piano 10: Piano Music Without Limits

Label: MDG Scene Country: Germany

"Original compositions and transcriptions in the tradition of Nancarrow. "Vol. 10 of the Player Piano series on MDG features composers who have been inspired by Conlon Nancarrow, the master of the player piano. MDG owes a debt of gratitude to Jurgen Hocker, the player piano expert from Bergisch Gladbach, and to his Ampico grand pianos for making these musical impossibilities a reality.

Gyorgy Ligeti was a border crosser. It is thus hardly surprising that he was the first to discover the great significance of Nancarrow's oeuvre. In the twentieth century this major composer wrote highly demanding piano etudes in the best tradition of Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, and Rachmaninoff. As Nancarrow in his Studies for Player Piano, Ligeti designed several voices with various velocities. In order to highlight the temporal structures of these pieces intended for performance by a living pianist, Ligeti also had some of his works transferred to the player piano. A wonderful timbre radiates from these centenarian instruments equipped with Bosendorfer sound! Here as many notes as one wants can be produced simultaneously in all the various keyboard regions and at such a swift pace that the tones swirl in a musical hurricane -- not to mention meters and rhythms of a complexity transcending pianistic realization on the keyboard."-MDG Scene