Copland - Major Solo Piano Works - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Alberni String Quartet - String Quartet in E minor [COMPACT DISCS] date 05/01/2009

Playing the piano was for Aaron Copland one of the necessities of life, like eating or breathing. Wherever he was there was always a piano somewhere near. Even during conversations and interviews, so it is said, his fingers used to move involuntarily on the table-top like on an imaginary keyboard. And it is in piano works that Copland's compositional development found it's culmination again and again. The InchPassacagliaInch is his very first large-scale work, and the 5InchPiano FantasyInch can be regarded as his most ambitious, most extensive composition in the field of absolute music, a work in which he sums up and concentrates many characteristics of his musical style in a late work.American musician Nina Tichman has been particularly interested in contemporary compositions and their roots in traditional music for the piano. The music of Schönberg and Debussy, whose complete piano works she has presented cyclically (also released on the WERGO tag), as well as that of contemporary American composers such as Copland and Elliott Carter, plays a central role in her repertoire.

Aaron is Moses. Leonard Bernstein's affectionate aphorism about his friend and mentor expresses exactly Aaron Copland's importance in the development of a truly American music. Copland, born 1900, influenced as did no other the emergence of America from a country whose aspiring musicians, with few exceptions, had to go abroad in order to receive adequate training, into a mecca for musical training and a center for new artistic impulses. His personal involvement together with his popularity smoothed the way for innumerable composers and was instrumental in awakening the interest of the American public for it's native musical language.The scope of Copland's language as a composer is defined by two extremes his so-called InchsevereInch style, determined by serial techniques and stringent formal structure, and his simple style, in which he tried to write music that would be more accessible to a broad public.American musician Nina Tichman has been acclaimed as one of the leading pianists of her generation (Neue Musik Zeitung). Winner of numerous international competitions and being at home in the major music centers of the world, Nina Tichman has been particularly interested in contemporary compositions and their roots in traditional music for the piano. The music of Schönberg and Debussy, whose complete piano works she has presented cyclically (also released on the WERGO tag), as well as that of contemporary American composers such as Copland and Elliott Carter, plays a central role in her repertoire.