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SOMM Recordings announces the return of pianist Cordelia Williams with Nightlight, a compelling exploration of the contrariness of night, it's turmoil, terror and tenderness, and the longing for light. Inspired by Williams' experience mothering her two infant children in the isolating dead of night while the world around her slept, Nightlight is dedicated, she says, Inchto the many people who... feel alone in the darkness. To those who experience despair or sublime melancholy during the hours before the dawn, who are searching for solace, peace or impossible hope. To anyone lost who is waiting to be found by the lightInch. Spanning four centuries, from Thomas Tomkins' exquisitely melancholic A Sad Pavanfor these Distracted Times to jazz virtuoso Bill Evans' hypnotic, fantasy-laced Peace Piece, the recital moves from sleep-inducing nightfall - Mozart's D minor Fantasia, K.397 - to waking hopes for the new dawn in what Williams describes as the Inchshimmering hope, glory just beyond the horizonInch of Schumann's Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of Dawn).The becalmed and tempest-driven waters of the ocean in Scriabin's Piano Sonata No.2 (Sonata-Fantasy) prove a perfect metaphor for the stilled and turbulent currents of the night. Plunging into night's darkest, most disturbed places, the dislocations of Schubert's late Sonata in C minor, D958, are salved by two soothingly nocturne-like Liszt Consolations. InchThe music recorded here,Inch says Williams, Inchsees our loneliness and darkness, recognizes and validates those unutterable feelings, and reaches out a hand of consolation.Inch Piano winner of the 2006 BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition, Cordelia Williams' previous SOMM releases include her acclaimed coupling of Bach and Arvo Pärt (SOMMCD 0186) hailed by International Piano as Incha magnificently stimulating concept, brilliantly recognizedInch and well-received reci
