Solo recital album

I am very excited to release my newest solo recital album.  It is a collection
of diverse pieces which I believe highlights some of my interests in piano
recital programming.  I have spent many years experimenting with various styles
and interpretations of the piano repertoire, and I believe this soul-searching
experience has found its expression in the music on this CD.

I begin the CD with Haydn’s late Sonata in C major Hob XVI:50, a popular, yet
tricky work of Haydn.  The tempi of the first two movements are highly important
and very dependant on the acoustic of the hall.  One can easily play the first
movement too fast in a live hall, yet it can be difficult to play fast enough in
a dry hall.  In a recording environment one has a little more flexibility
regarding tempo.  The lyricism of the 2nd movement also requires some time and
space, but one can easily begin to play the piece in six instead of three,
causing it to bog down.

Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes Op. 13 are a wonderful collection of variations and
etudes which present other difficulties.  They are technically very demanding,
but once mastered, the musical expression can be somewhat elusive.  Allowing
each variation or etude to exist in its own world, yet have relation to the form
as a whole proves quite difficult, very often as a result of technical demands.

Following the Schumann, I explore the sound world of Debussy in his collection
Estampes.  I’ve always loved french music and often attempt to include something
of Debussy or Ravel in my recitals.  The piano, with its pedal, allows so many
nuances and inflections with this music, something which no other instrument or
orchestra has the capability of producing.

The next set of three works are Franz Liszt’s transcriptions of three Schubert
songs Gretchen am Spinnrade, Ave Maria, and Erlkönig.  All three of these works
are among the most famous of Schubert’s lieder transcriptions, but the
possibilities of expression are endless with Schubert and I hope I bring
something a little different to all three songs.  Liszt also made different
versions of these works, and I use a few different sections from the
conventional arrangements, most notably the introduction of Gretchen where he
starts the spinning wheel from nothing, and in the final pages of the Erlkönig,
where in one of his four versions he keeps the triplets moving right to the end
instead of changing to the duple 8ths.

I conclude the CD with two virtuoso transcriptions, Horowitz’s transcription of
Liszt’s 15th Hungarian Rhapsody Rakoczy March, and Cziffra’s transcription of
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee.  Horowitz has always been one of my
favorite pianists and his transcriptions have become popular pieces in the hands
of many young virtuosos today.  They are particularly interesting as Horowitz
never wrote them down (or never gave any one his scores) so each pianists
version is always a little different depending on talent of whoever listened to
the piece 500 times and wrote down what they think Horowitz played.  The Cziffra
transcription is a brilliant work as he manipulates the famous theme using
interlocking octaves which creates a wonderful virtuoso effect.