Geoffrey Douglas

Outside of Alban Berg, Anton Webern, and Hanns Eisler, Arnold Schoenberg's most gifted European pupil was probably Greek composer Nikolaos Skalkottas. The Swedish label BIS has devoted at least 13 discs to his neglected output, and the main work featured here is the first recording of a monument of early serial composition, Skalkottas' Piano Concerto No. 3 (1939), a work so difficult that at its 1969 premiere three different pianists were employed to play its individual movements. BIS manages to get along in utilizing one very fine pianist, Geoffrey Douglas Madge…….

Uncle Dave Lewis @ AllMusic

Sixty-one years after its completion, Skalkottas' Musik für Klavier -the overal title of his 32 Piano Pieces - can assume its place among the major piano cycles of the 20th century. Formidably difficult technically, its
apparently disparate content - there is not the conceptual focus of, say, Messiaen's Vingt regagds sur l'enfant Jésus - may have militated against its wider recognition. So itis a tribute to Nikolaos Samaltanos, in this first complete recording, that he projects the work as an integral entity. and as the compendium of mid-century pianism that the composer intended……….A timely release urgently recommended.

Richard Whitehouse [Grammophone november 2001]

Impressively and persuasively played, Geoffrey Douglas Madge's disc of the piano music of Ernst Krenek is a welcome addition to the slender catalog of Krenek's piano music. And with the two world-premiere performances on this disc, that catalog has grown by almost 45 minutes. The Toccata and Chaconne, Op. 13, written in 1922 when the composer was 20, is a monstrous work of immense and awful depths, perhaps a bit excessive in its length and its expressive extremity, but still an amazing work of music. The Variations (12) in Three Movements, Op. 79, written in 1937 and revised in 1940 and 1957, is just as expressive, but the ……

James Leonard

If you're ever going to like or maybe even love the piano music of Ernst Krenek, it will probably be with his three-movement Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 2, from 1919. A comely and lithe spirit of a work compared with his austerely expressive later works, this sonata is still an enormously ambitious work for a 19-year-old. But pianist Geoffrey Douglas Madge plays the First with complete sympathy and dedication to its youthful expressivity. Although it's an atypical work by Krenek, for that very reason it may be the most lovable of his piano works. The four-movement Sonata No. 3, Op. 92, from …..

James Leonard @ AllMusic

Ferruccio Busoni’s Elegies (1908) and An die Jugend (1909) are experimental pieces that explore new pathways in the composer’s harmonic language and artistic evolution. Elegies is an aesthetic manifesto, a wish for a turning point in the composer’s creative evolution, but also, more ambitiously, in all future music. Ferruccio Busoni believed that music should be, as he commented to the critic and composer Hans Pfitzner, “well meant and full of peace,” but this did not preclude the provocative gesture of the Elegies’ exceptional harmonic variety, brought about by new chordal progressions and juxtapositions and giving an impression of a potentially inexhaustible tonality. An die Jugend is a collection of four pieces written in 1909 and published as four separate ‘books’ in the same year. These pieces have some stylistic features with Busoni’s first Elegy, while showing even further experimentation on the composer’s part. Carlo Grante performs these works on a Bösendorfer Imperial Grand Piano.

Irish flutist James Galway is a superb interpreter of the classical flute repertoire and a consummate entertainer. His silky tone and masterful technique, charismatic personality, and varied programs appeal to audiences of all ages and musical tastes.

Johnny Cash was one of the most imposing and influential figures in post-World War II country music. With his deep, resonant baritone and spare percussive guitar, he had a basic, distinctive sound. Cash didn't sound like Nashville, nor did he sound like honky tonk or rock & roll. He created his own subgenre, falling halfway between the blunt emotional honesty of folk, the rebelliousness of rock & roll, and the world-weariness of country. Cash's career coincided with the birth of rock & roll, and his rebellious attitude and simple, direct musical attack shared a lot of similarities with rock. However, there was a deep sense of history – as he would later illustrate with his series of historical albums – that kept him forever tied with country. And he was one of country music's biggest stars of the '50s and '60s, scoring well over 100 hit singles…