Athanasiadis / Shoji / Samssuli - Soft Light - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Following Great American Sonatas, his admired debut on SOMM RECORDINGS, pianist Nathan Williamson turns to British piano music of the 20th century in Color and Light, a revealing exploration of how the past influences the present and the new. A century-spanning programme from Delius's quixotic 1887 Nocturne (more familiar as An Nacht, the Florida Suite's finale, here in Robert Threlfall's 1986 transcription) to Anthony Herschel Hill's combustible Toccata of 1985 also lights on three other distinctive but highly contrasted composers. Modernity makes itself felt in Elisabeth Lutyens' The Ring of Bone (1975), which strikingly employs the use of spoken text in what Williamson describes in his booklet notes as Incha bold and heartfelt gestureInch. William Alwyn's Twelve Preludes (1958) pay a glancing nod to Lutyens' serialist techniques even while displaying Incha peculiarly English combination of both tonality and modalityInch characteristically his own. Peter Dickinson's Inchpostmodern, poly-stylisticInch Paraphrase II (1967) is the work of a composer open to the broadest influences, it's seven sections inventively re-working an earlier three-part motet and receiving here their first studio recordings. Slowly emerging into the light, Anthony Herschel Hill's Litany (1992) and Toccata (1985) - heard here in first recordings - are the product of a wholly individual compositional voice, boasting, says Williamson, Inchsome of the most gorgeously idiomatic and exhilarating piano writing of any late-20th century composerInch. Delius's Prelude and Duet from his one-act opera Margot la Rouge, composed in 1902 yet un-performed until 1983, are distinctive for their delicate harmonic textures and colors, masterfully transcribed for piano by Maurice Ravel. Featuring music by Bernstein, Copland, Charles Ives and Lou Harrison, Great American Sonatas, Nathan Williamson's 2017 SOMM Recor

Detroit based Akropolis Reed Quintet releases InchGhost LightInch, a collection of works written for them that are in dialogue with various InchghostsInch - histories that are manifest in personal, collective, and even organic contexts. Featuring music by Stacy Garrop, Michael Gilbertson, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Jeff Scott, and Theo Chandler, Akropolis' precise and dynamic performances are matched by their curatorial creativity and commitment. Celebrating over a decade of music making, the Akropolis Reed Quintet, with their Inchinfallible musicality and huge vitalityInch (Fanfare), has sparked a revolution in wind chamber music. An untamed band of 5 reed players and entrepreneurs, the members of Akropolis are united by a shared passion to make new music that connects and reflects real people.

'The father of Swedish music' and 'the Swedish Handel' are two descriptions of Johan Helmich Roman one of Sweden's most important composers. About as cosmopolitan as you could get, he spent six years in Handel's orchestra at the King's Theatre, and his extensive travels around Europe brought him into contact with fellow composers in France, Italy and Germany. London was home to many composers from mainland Europe, notable among them, not only Handel, but Francesco Geminiani. Roman composed around twenty Assaggi (Assaggio has been translated as 'sample', 'essay', 'study' or 'experiment') and they range from multi movement works to single movements, with some surviving as just fragments. They were composed in the 1730s, and they were published, making it very likely that the composer intended them to be performed. If they were intended to be exercises, then their composer possessed a formidable technique. They are also beautifully written for the violin and reveal a startling musical imagination at work.