Patrick Higgins – Tocsin (2020)

Du Passager clandestin, sa toute première nouvelle publiée en 1956, en passant par Meurtre à Cape Cod, où l'on retrouve ses célèbres héros Willy et Alvirah, jusqu'à La mort porte un masque de beauté, texte inédit et point d'orgue de ce recueil, Mary Higgins Clark donne ici toute la mesure de son talent de nouvelliste. …

An elegant and sophisticated pianist, his encyclopedic harmonic approach and wide range of his repertory made him one of the most distinctive jazz pianists to come out of Chicago, gaining the respect of local and visiting musicians for his notable mastery of the instrument.

This recording was taken from a live performance during the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2019/20 season at London’s Royal Festival Hall. The recording captures the thrill and electricity of the live performance.

1905 was a year of revolutionary upheaval in pre-Soviet Russia. Shostakovich based this work on the events of one episode of that year, when thousands of workers and their families converged on the Winter Palace in St Petersburg to petition the Tsar over their working and living conditions. The Tsar had been advised to leave, no-one was there to accept the petition, and the authorities resorted to cavalry charges to disperse the crowd. With 200 dead and 500 wounded, this incident damaged the Tsar’s reputation and flamed the fire of revolution in the masses. Whether the work was intended as a politically correct commemoration to please his Soviet paymasters, or actually as a commentary on the 1956 Hungarian uprising, remains under debate. There is no doubt, however, that this majestic score, almost filmic in its conception, remains a milestone in Shostakovich’s output. The BBC Philharmonic under John Storgårds captures the tremendous intensity of the work in this recording.