Schwantner

This release from Australian award-winning pianist Tamara Anna Cislowska was recorded in February 1997 at the Conservatorium of Music, Newcastle. and consists of mystical, exotic, visionary, ancient and other-worldly timeless piano music for the modern world. It offers a musical experience unlike that of any other piano album - dreamy, exotic textures that will transport the listener to far away places and peaceful contemplative worlds.

From a string of early career successes in the 1970s, Emanuel Ax has emerged as one of the most versatile, brilliant, and universally respected pianists on the international concert scene.

The Galax Quartet (Elizabeth Blumenstock and David Wilson, Baroque violins; Roy Whelden, viola da gamba; and David Morris, Baroque cello) is equally at home performing works by 17th and 18th century composers as well as cutting edge, newly commissioned works. Their period instrumentswith gut strings, low angle fingerboards, no chin rests or end pins, and lighter bowsoffer a rich pallet of coloration and nuances to composers of new music. Joined by guest artist Karen R. Clark (contralto) the Galax Quartet takes us on a traversal of three vivid musical realms.

Born in Shanghai in 1955, Xiaogang Ye is regarded as one of China’s leading contemporary composers. From 1978 until 1983, he studied at the composition department of the Central Conservatory of Music in China, and after graduation was appointed resident composer and lecturer at the Conservatory. From 1987, he studied at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester in New York. His former teachers include Mingxin Du, Samuel Adler, Joseph Schwantner, Louis Andriessen and Alexander Goehr. After he returned home from the US in 1994, Xiaogang Ye served as a professor in the composition department of the Central Conservatory of Music, a doctoral advisor, the Deputy Dean of the composition department and Educational Inspector of the Conservatory. From 2009 to 2018 he worked as one of four vice presidents of the Central Conservatory of Music.

Behzad Ranjbaran (b.1955) was born in Tehran, and came to the United States in 1974 to study at Indiana University. After receiving his doctorate from Juilliard in composition (he studied with Diamond, Schwantner, and Persichetti), he became a faculty member there. I confess his name was not familiar to me before this CD arrived in the mail, but perhaps it should have been. Among his recent accomplishments is a piano concerto that was premiered in 2008 by Jean-Yves Thibaudet and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under Robert Spano. Joshua Bell premiered his Violin Concerto in 2003. Furthermore, this is the second all-Ranjbaran CD to be released.

'Panorama of American Piano Music' is a comprehensive survey of 20th century piano works, beginning with Ives’ “The Alcotts” movement from the 'Concord Sonata' (1912) through Lou Harrison’s 'Summerfield Set' (1988). Every decade is represented with works from between those years. Pianist Yvar Mikhashoff (1941–93) was a master at presenting marathon concerts on a single theme. The 'Panorama' was one of them, exploring the remarkable diversity of 20th century American music, from serialism to minimalism, populist to avant garde experimentalism, short works for amateur pianists to virtuoso pieces. Never before has such a survey of piano music been represented.