Matthew Schellhorn, piano

This new release from British pianist Matthew Schellhorn draws together an interesting and eclectic selection of piano pieces. As a long-standing champion of contemporary composers through commissions and premières, Schellhorn brings new music to a wider audience.

The pieces on this new album all are by living composers, including Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Michael Zev Gordon, Diana Burrell, Cecilia McDowell and Paul Spicer. The first 20 tracks on the album are all pieces written for Schellhorn, with many première recordings or first commercial recordings.

On first listen, the works may seem disparate and unconnected, ranging from bold clanging statements (for example, The Will of the Tones by Jeremy Thurlow, which opens the album) to more reflective or gentler works, such as the hymn-like Floreat Coll. Reg.: Radcliffe’s Repose – a work, with its companion piece, hint at Howell’s Magnificat (and it’s worth noting here that Matthew Schellhorn has recorded piano music by Howells). But the pieces all share interpretative insights and artistic connections, which are revealed as one explores the album more closely.

The album takes its title from track 7 – Odd Sympathies by Tim Watts. Schellhorn says, ‘It’s a metaphor for my collaborations, where my performance aims, in diverse ways, to align with a composer’s creativity. I think it nicely sums up those unexpected moments of resonance between performer and composer that somehow connect across all these different works.’

As well as resonances between performer and composer, there are tributes to other composers: Haydn in works by Cecilia McDowell and Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Debussy and Ravel in Michael Zev Gordon’s Inocente, and Scott Joplin in Joplin Jigsaws by Colin Riley. Just as Schellhorn pays tribute to contemporary composers in his selection on this recording, so the composers featured also demonstrate their own ‘odd sympathies’ to other composers by through obvious and not-so-obvious resonances, use of harmony, lyricism and rhythm. This makes for a collection of music which feels at once unique while also echoing other composers and genres.

As Schellhorn himself says, ‘each composer brings out something different in me as a performer’, and the eclectic and contrasting range of pieces reveals a pianist completely at ease with this kind of repertoire. From grand virtuosic gestures, scurrying runs, percussive textures and jazz syncopations to introspection, poignancy and elegant lyricism, Schellhorn gives us the full range of pianistic technique and artistry, vivid colours and sensitive touch.

This fine recording offers an excellent example of the very best of contemporary writing for the piano, performed by a pianist totally in sympathy with the myriad styles of the composers he performs.

Odd Sympathies is available on CD and streaming on the First Hand Records label

Scores available from Composers Edition

Meet the Artist interview with Matthew Schellhorn

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FW