Alejandro Velasco - Ah - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

On April 29, 1844 in Paris's Salle Erard, Charles-Valentin Alkan returned to the after an absence of six years. Bach, Scarlatti, Beethoven and Weber featured, as well as four of Alkan's latest compositions. Two of these appear on Andrew Yiangou's remarkable recital - the Op.22 Nocturne and the Op.23 E minor Saltarelle. The centre piece in the program is the misleadingly titled Sonatina in A minor, Op.61. This is a large-scale sonata of huge technical challenges. Busoni claimed that Alkan was, along with Chopin, Liszt, Schumann and Brahms was one of the five greatest composers for the piano since Beethoven. Alkan certainly discovered unheard of sonorities imbued with a disturbing power, and a preoccupation with the darker shades of human experience. Andrew Yiangou's program is a fascinating view into the musical world of one of the most enigmatic composers of the 19th century.

Physics, chemistry, biology, culture, history the inextricable interweaving between all these faces of the prism called man (and music) seem to be captured in the six compositions - spanning a period of twenty years, from 1996 to 2015 - collected on this album. The constant projection towards the immensity of time and it's unfolding in boundless space is the ground zero for the musical thought of Nicola Sani, who is perfectly familiar with the cosmic visions and tensions that, starting from different assumptions and tending towards different aims, pervade the work of Luigi Nono, Giacinto Scelsi and Karlheinz Stockhausen. A thought that is at the same time permutating and persistent, attentive to micro variations and sensitive to the sudden cataclysms of sound. It's material aspect, of physical energy, is confronted with chemistry a particular type of chemistry, electronic chemistry, that is, the informed use of contemporary technology as a support and extension of the possibilities of instruments, their dilation in the space/time of listening. A space that is both interior and external; enclosed within a perceptual intimacy, projected into a sensory and visual dimension, indispensable to imagine and to which all traditional architectonic limits are bound.

In 2016, composer and pianist Jeffrey Jacob conducted interviews with children of illegal immigrants, whose plight ended up inspiring the pianist's fifth symphony. Remarkably for a contemporary composition, the work is quite condensed timewise; nevertheless, it packs the whole gamut of human sentiment, with the movements titled I. Lagrimas [Tears], II. Fear; Grace, III. Separation, Grief; Resolution, Triumph and, at last IV. Sanctuary I. Next up are three works for piano and orchestra, with Jacob at the piano. His clarity of tone is striking and the perfect fit for his own compositions. For a 20th-century composer, Jacob's music is surprisingly tonal. The sound is unique and evocative; had Olivier Messiaen studied with Rachmaninoff, the Adagietto from Jacob's Piano Concerto No. 2 might well be the result. Epitaph (In Memoriam) is fittingly epic for it's title and, in style, highly reminiscent of Shostakovich's piano concertos. A highlight of the album, however, appears in the form of the two-movement The Persistence of Memory, in which Jacob shifts his aim from the 20th to the mid-19th century. After a modern introduction, the listener is greeted with a quotation of Schumann's Fantasy Dance, and the beautifully lamenting solo cello contrasted with lyrical piano lines is a direct reminder of the German composer's Piano Trio No. 2. Lastly, the pianist harks back to the centerpiece of DREAMERS, his symphony a lone oboe interspersed with electronics brings both the album and the fifth symphony's subject to a close. The outward circumstances have not changed; but the intangible remains the same.