Peter Donohoe - Songs Without Words 1 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

?Lieder ohne Worte - Songs without Words - seems to be a description invented by Mendelssohn himself for these short, lyrical and descriptive piano pieces which he composed so prolifically. Indeed, it is arguable that these works define his pianistic output in the same way that the Mazurka defines Chopin's. Publishing them in sets of six, Mendelssohn composed Lieder ohne Worte throughout his career - they proved a type of composition to which he had a lifetime attraction. For the first volume, rather than approaching them chronologically or as complete sets, Peter Donohoe selected pieces to build a satisfying programme. Here he does the same with all the pieces that remain. In addition, the album features three free-standing significant works. The 17 Variations sérieuses, from 1841, is one of Mendelssohn's largest solo piano works, and was published in an album to raise funds for a monument to Beethoven. The Phantasie on 'The Last Rose of Summer' is a much earlier work, based on the Irish folk melody that - with added words by the Irish poet Thomas Moore - took Europe by storm in the early 1800s. The album concludes with Rachmaninoff's piano transcription of the Scherzo from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Peter Donohoe CBE studied at Chetham's School of Music and Leeds University before going on to study at the Royal Northern College of Music with Derek Wyndham and in Paris with Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod. He is acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time, for his musicianship, stylistic versatility, and commanding technique. He first came across the works of Busoni in the early 1980s and, as he states in his booklet note, 'Busoni's contribution to the musical history of the twentieth century is inestimable, and I feel very much enriched by the several decades of my exposure to it.' The program he has chosen includes three of the pinnacles of Busoni's virtuosic output the Toccata, BV 287, the seven Elegien, and the Sonatina on Bizet's Carmen, alongside the much earlier Bach transcription of which Peter Donohoe writes 'The Toccata, in particular, has always struck me as one of the most joyous pieces in the history of instrumental music, and Busoni's transcription certainly brings out that joy.'

This product is an authorized manufactured on demand CD-R