Release Date: 28 October 2022
Label: MDG
Packaging Type: Fat Double (a 2.5cm thick jewel case, fits several CDs)
No of Units: 5
Barcode: 760623227221
Genres: Classical Contemporary
Description
This standard-setting complete recording on instruments from the collection of Nancarrow, confidant Jurgen Hocker now brings together all 50 Studies for player piano in one attractive box set. Recorded on restored grand pianos with Ampico playing devices from the Nancarrow collection, we hear his music for two player pianos in outstanding sound quality for the first time
Conlon Nancarrow first appeared in European music centres in the 1980s. For decades he had lived in Mexican seclusion and, unnoticed by the public, had created a unique oeuvre from his fascination with player pianos. Ligeti aptly calls it "The Well-Tempered Clavier of the Twenty-First Century".
Nancarrow concentrates in his work on the time structure of tones. His highly complex polyphonic compositional style, often based on mathematical ratios, was inexecutable by flesh-and-blood pianists. The self-playing player piano offered the composer the performer he needed, decades before it became common practice to program music through computers.
Nancarrow painstakingly punched hole after hole in the long rolls of paper that drive the player piano. It often took him months to make just five minutes of music. In the process, the limits of auditory experience are stretched to the utmost: up to 200 strokes per second create a rush of sound that even the human ear struggles to separate into individual notes.
"The recording is a real labour of love, and far outclasses previous recordings […] if you want to know what the fuss is all about, you need this set. It is not going to be bettered." – MusicWeb International
Tracklisting
Andrzej Szadejko, Agnieszka Budzinska-Bennett, Cracow Singers
Lea Suter
Wolfgang Sawallisch, Leopolder-Quartett, Munchner Klaviertrio
Various Artists
Holger Falk, Steffen Schleiermacher
Leipzig String Quartet
Chimaera Trio
Consort of Musicke, Emma Kirkby, Anthony Rooley
Sultan Stevenson
John Patitucci
Tommy Whittle & Alan Barnes
Xhosa Cole
John Clayton & Mulgrew Miller
George Cables
Sylvaine Helary & Orchestre Incandescent
The Exu
