Release Date: 09 June 2014
Label: Odradek Records
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 855317003127
Genres: Classical
Description
Japanese pianist Aki Kuroda presents four orchestral works from a pair of major centres of European culture, Paris and Vienna, at the dawn of the 20th century, written by four composers who perhaps more than any others were shaping the course of new music at the time. Here heard transcribed for piano solo, she reveals new perspectives on them, allowing us to encounter the music afresh, in its boldest and perhaps most essential form.
The disc opens with a work specially commissioned for the CD, Yoichi Sugiyama's richly enhanced transcription of Mahler's Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony. Stravinsky's Firebird follows, in Guido Agosti's virtuosic arrangement, and then Leonard Borwick's atmospheric resetting of Debussy's masterpiece, Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. Finally comes Steuermann's incredibly difficult transcription of Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie, Op. 9, a work that extends tonality and human dexterity to its furthest limits.
An artist famous for tango and jazz, a frequent collaborator with Japanese traditional singers, and the performer of the 'Final Fantasy X. XIII' videogame soundtracks, Aki Kuroda continues to expand her pianistic horizons to now include the novel tone pallets and expansive sound-space of modern orchestral writing, in the process, bringing us intriguingly into closer proximity to the composer, and to the act of composing itself.
Personnel: Aki Kuroda (piano)
Tracklisting
Nuno Côrte-Real, Ensemble Darcos & Coro Ricercare
Artur Pizarro, Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal, Julia Jones
Ingibjorg Azima
Jenaer Philharmonie, Simon Gaudenz
Carion Wind Quintet
Johannes Fleischmann
Tony Addison Sextet
Vasco Pimentel Trio
Karolos
Daniel Di Prinzio, Ihor Kordiuk
Nora von Marschall
Isabel Schicketanz
The Counterpoints
Narratio Quartet
Danbi Um; Juho Pohjonen
Lea Suter
