Christopher Williams - Liszt: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 65 - Piano Works on Hungarian Themes - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

This album of rarely heard piano music by Mendelssohn displays the composer's wide emotional range and features two youthful sonatas, composed when he was just eleven years old. Pianist Christopher Williams has previously recorded acclaimed albums of music by Semyon Barmotin for Grand Piano (GP799, 865, 866)and makes his Naxos tag debut with this album.

SEMYON ALEXEYEVICH BARMOTIN (1877-1939) was a student of Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov, and his fate under the Soviet regime in the 1930s remains a mystery, but what survives of his music is impressive in both scale and content. These world première recordings are filled with color and contrast the Tema con variazioni transforms it's material into a multitude of moods to conclude in a symphonic march, while the 20 Preludes are striking in their sophisticated harmonies and heightened emotional impact. Christopher Williams is a music graduate of Cardiff University and now leads a busy and varied professional life as a pianist, composer, conductor, teacher and arranger. He is currently assistant director of the BBC National Chorus of Wales and is a pianist for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, with whom he has performed at the BBC Proms and recorded for the Chandos and Hyperion labels. In addition to his work as a soloist, Williams is in great demand as an accompanist and chamber musician, and has partnered many of the prominent instrumentalists of his generation including Philippe Schartz, Tim Thorpe, David Childs, David Pyatt and Tine Thing Helseth. He has also appeared on BBC TV and been broadcast on BBC Radio and Radio Luxembourg. His recording of Brahms transcriptions for Grand Piano was featured as album of the week on NDR Kultur.

A student of Rimsky-Korsakov and Balakirev and a contemporary of Stravinsky and Rachmaninov, Semyon Alexeyevich Barmotin (1877-1939) flourished in the years before the Russian Revolution. His was probably the first Ballade for solo piano written by a Russian composer and this large-scale work exemplifies his perfect control of expansive form, Lisztian virtuosic impulse and thematic variety. The two sets of Morceaux enshrine other essential elements of his art - folkloric influences, crystalline sonorities and true expressive depth. Christopher Williams' third instalment in this acclaimed cycle features all world première recordings.