"lousie Hay"

A groundbreaking collection of studies by one of the 19th century’s leading keyboard lions. By the early 1830s, the celebrated virtuoso Friedrich Wilhelm Michael Kalkbrenner was at the height of his pianistic powers. It was at this time that Chopin moved to Paris and found Kalkbrenner to be the finest pianist he had heard: ‘Herz, Liszt and Hiller are all zeros next to Kalkbrenner.’

Colin Hay first emerged as songwriter/vocalist for hitmakers Men at Work before establishing himself as a solo artist. But his love for music was born in his native Scotland while working at his parents' record store and hearing the hits of the day. At home during quarantine in 2021 Hay was moved to record some of his favorites from that period. From the Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset" to Faces' "Ooh La La" and Dusty Springfield's "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself", Hay delivers a set a lushly reimagined classics that showcase both his talent for interpreting songs and his iconic vocals.

As the pre-eminent forerunners to Chopin’s works in the same genres, the Nocturnes of John Field have few rivals for music well known by history but so seldom heard. They were largely inspired by the slow movements of Classical concertos, Mozart above all, as well as opera arias. From them, Field evolved his own firm concept of a form with rich harmonies and gentle dynamics to suggest the night and dreaming, though in fact he began by giving these pieces traditional names such as Pastorale, Serenade and "Romance. He wrote the 18 works not as a set, but over the course of 15 years, rarely completing more than one and never more than three in a single year. Liszt observed in them ‘The total absence of everything that looks to effect'.