Gruodis: Piano Music

The music and teaching of Juozas Gruodis (1884-1948) laid the foundations for a national school of composition in Lithuania in the first half of the twentieth century, with his style absorbing influences from both east and west - Rachmaninoff, Skryabin, Chopin, Debussy, Reger, Strauss - and from Lithuanian folk-music. Though the piano works heard here were composed within a span of only eight years, they show considerable variety, from the poised to the passionate and powerful, all expressed with full-bodied late-Romantic virtuosity and verve.