Two works from English composer Michael Finnissy: "Choralvorspiele" for solo piano (Mark Knoop) in 8 parts, technically demanding choral preludes blending Norwegian and American melodies; and an 11-part work celebrating Hans Christian Andersen's lesser known paper cut-outs performed by Knoop and soprano Juliet Fraser, with texts from Andersen in German and English.
Includes original texts in English and Danish as an attached 6 page booklet .
UPC: 752156021223
Label: Hat [now] ART Catalog ID: hat(now)ART212 Squidco Product Code: 26251
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2018 Country: Switzerland Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold 3 Panels w/ booklet
Choralvorspiele recorded at the Britten Studio, in Snape Maltings, UK on November 1st and nd, 2016, Andersen-Liederkreis recorded on August 21st and 22nd, 2017, by David Lefeber.
"English composer and pianist Michael Finnissy (b. 1946) has served as a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, the University of Sussex, and is currently Professor of composition at the University of Southampton and Composer in Residence at St. John's College Cambridge. His works for the piano are especially notable for their extreme technique demands. He is concerned with the political aspects of music, and believes that all music is programmatic to some degree. That is, a composition exists in not just the composer's mind, but inside a culture that reflects both the extra-musical and purely musical concerns of the composer. "My music contains many musics, but impure, misremembered, smudged and melted, torn apart yet not completely erased." (Michael Finnissy) "Michael's music is gnarly, gristly even- one senses keenly that it is the product of an intellectual yet instinctive wrestling with the very philosophy of music."-Juliet Fraser
Includes original texts in English and Danish as an attached 6 page booklet .