{"product_id":"benjamin-complete-piano-works","title":"Benjamin: Complete Piano Works","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe only collected survey of George Benjamin’s\n\u003cbr\u003epiano music on record, from a Dutch pianist\n\u003cbr\u003ewho specialises in new music and has worked\n\u003cbr\u003eclosely with the composer.\n\u003cbr\u003eBenjamin was an accomplished pianist as well\n\u003cbr\u003eas composer from his early years, and it seems\n\u003cbr\u003enatural in retrospect that his first published\n\u003cbr\u003ework should be the Piano Sonata he composed\n\u003cbr\u003ein 1977-8, as a prodigious student of Olivier\n\u003cbr\u003eMessiaen and Yvonne Loriod. Certain harmonic\n\u003cbr\u003etouches may mark the sonata out as the work\n\u003cbr\u003eof ‘a Messiaen pupil’ but the unsettled, leaping\n\u003cbr\u003egestural sense of the piece is particular to\n\u003cbr\u003eBenjamin. So much of Benjamin’s later music is\n\u003cbr\u003efascinatingly prefigured here, including a sense\n\u003cbr\u003eof timing for a gradual accumulation of tension\n\u003cbr\u003e(‘stormy eruptions’ and ‘savage violence’ in\n\u003cbr\u003ethe composer’s words) that marks out his first\n\u003cbr\u003emajor orchestral score, Ringed by the Flat\n\u003cbr\u003eHorizon. Underlying that sense of timing is a\n\u003cbr\u003efeeling for dramatic gesture which has found\n\u003cbr\u003eits natural expression in a series of operas\n\u003cbr\u003ewritten during the last 20 years.\n\u003cbr\u003eDedicated to Loriod, Sortilèges (1981) makes\n\u003cbr\u003eclear its French heritage in the notes as well as\n\u003cbr\u003ethe title, while the three subsequent Studies\n\u003cbr\u003efor piano, composed over the next four years,\n\u003cbr\u003efind Benjamin working out intricate rhythmic\n\u003cbr\u003eproblems and their solutions. Even the\n\u003cbr\u003eRelativity Rag takes a quirky, sideways look at\n\u003cbr\u003eits superficially familiar material. The next\n\u003cbr\u003epiano pieces had to wait until 2001, and the\n\u003cbr\u003eShadowlines which Benjamin wrote for PierreLaurent Aimard. This set of six canonic preludes\n\u003cbr\u003etakes Benjamin’s inclination to distill and pare\n\u003cbr\u003eback to a new level, while the piano writing\n\u003cbr\u003eitself is richer and more unselfconsciously\n\u003cbr\u003einformed by the heritage of piano literature.\n\u003cbr\u003eFinally, there are the Piano Figures of 2004,\n\u003cbr\u003ewritten for students of the piano and\n\u003cbr\u003eaccordingly pitched at a technically lower level\n\u003cbr\u003ethan the other pieces, but no less preoccupied\n\u003cbr\u003ewith the rhythmic games and sudden swerves\n\u003cbr\u003eof thought that are hallmarks of his most\n\u003cbr\u003ecomplex music. All these pieces have been\n\u003cbr\u003erecorded, but never by the same pianist,\n\u003cbr\u003emaking Erik Bertsch’s new collection unique,\n\u003cbr\u003eand indispensable for any collector of new\n\u003cbr\u003emusic.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Piano Classics","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":49607726203160,"sku":"5029365102872","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0687\/4346\/3192\/files\/4322671-3141885.jpg?v=1777515433","url":"https:\/\/hbdirect.com\/products\/benjamin-complete-piano-works","provider":"HBDirect","version":"1.0","type":"link"}