Ligeti / Takumi - Complete Etudes - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

It Is Probably Clear to Anyone Who Has Ever Approached Chopin or Liszt Etudes That Piano Technique Means More Than Solitarily Practicing Czerny on the Piano. However, That the Tonal Palette of the Piano Can Also Explode in All Directions in Etudes Is Strongly Demonstrated By Stefan Wirth (On His Genuin Debut CD) The Dynamic and Musically Differentiated Powerhouses Stem from Szymanowski, Ligeti, Ives, As Well As Wirth Himself, Which in Their Diversity, Conciseness, and Wit Make People Forget Their Original Purpose. Not for Lounge Lizards and the Weak at Heart.

Ken Thomson, a staple of New York City's contemporary music and jazz communities, is widely regarded for his ability to blend a rich variety of influences and styles into his own musical language while maintaining a voice unmistakably his own. Embracing the combination of complexity in harmony, rhythm, and form while adding a punk-rock aesthetic, Thomson stands alone in his unique corner of today's multifaceted musical world. As a composer, he has been commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, Bang on a Can, the True/False Film Festival, Doug Perkins, Mariel Roberts, and others, and has received awards from New Music USA, ASCAP and Meet the Composer. This newest Sextet recording features ambitious, rhythmically incisive music that flows seamlessly between elaborate contrapuntal textures, edge of your seat unison passages, and blistering improvisations from a first rate band of colleagues.

Liszt's Etudes d'execution transcendante enshrine the spirit of High Romanticism, embodying extremes of expressive drama and technical virtuosity. His encyclopedic approach to technique is shown at it's most dazzling in this cycle, heard here in the 1852 revision which Liszt himself declared 'the only authentic one.' Integration of musical and technical elements is absolute, and the music's narratives are supported by dramatic physicality, an orchestral richness of sonority, and an exceptional coloristic quality. The young Moscow-born Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg is lauded across the globe as a deeply sensitive, insightful and compelling musician. Born in 1984 in Moscow, he moved to Tel Aviv at an early age, studying with his mother and then with Arie Vardi. He went on to win numerous awards, most recently the Second Prize at the Rubinstein Competition in 2011, and in 2013 he won First Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, catapulting his career to a new level.