Richard Wolff

Fantasies & Delusions: Music For Solo Piano is Billy Joel's first collection of classical compositions as performed by pianist Richard Joo.

Erich J. Wolff’s name will be unfamiliar to many but in the 1920s an authoritative reference book on popular art song ranked his compositions fourth, behind Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. The first volume in this series of Wolff’s Complete Songs introduces a composer of astonishing gifts whose Romanticism is as daring as his formal sophistication. Wolff’s songs are lyrical, serene and full of melodic beauty, coupled with piano writing that is both virtuosic and atmospheric.

Erich J. Wolff’s name will be unfamiliar to many but in the 1920s an authoritative reference book on popular art song ranked his compositions fourth, behind Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. The first volume in this series of Wolff’s Complete Songs introduces a composer of astonishing gifts whose Romanticism is as daring as his formal sophistication. Wolff’s songs are lyrical, serene and full of melodic beauty, coupled with piano writing that is both virtuosic and atmospheric.

Erich J. Wolff was a friend and contemporary of Schoenberg and Zemlinsky – his songs were highly successful and much admired before the First World War. Wolff’s tragic early death, however, contributed to his music being almost entirely forgotten today. Mostly dating from his final decade, the songs in this selection range from the charming children’s cycle Vier Kinderlieder von Richard Dehmel, to the incomparably profound cemetery scene of Friedhof. The recital concludes with the radiant Mein Meister, one of Wolff’s very last songs.