For many pianists, our first encounter with the music of Cyril Scott is through his exotic, languorous piece Lotus Land. This was also Georgian pianist Nino Gvetadze’s first introduction to Scott’s piano music, through one of her teachers at Tbilisi Conservatory. Scott’s music is rarely performed today, though Lotus Land remains a perennial favourite at…
Category: Classical music
Baroque in our time
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-36) Christmas is nearly upon us and time for the Requiems, the Stabat Maters, to be performed in concert halls and churches up and down the country. Now, more so than ever, audiences, can’t seem to be able to get enough of these religious works. Their familiar musical settings are popular for…
Monumental Messiaen: Steven Osborne at Queen Elizabeth Hall
Olivier Messiaen’s monumental and profound work Vingt Regards sur l’enfant-Jésus (Twenty Gazes on the Infant Jesus) is one of the greatest works in the pianist’s repertoire, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with such titans as Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas in terms of its scale. It is one of the most extraordinary and ground-breaking works in…
Intimate, personal and autobiographical: new releases of piano music by Schumann and Schubert
R. Schumann – Works for Piano / Joseph Tong This new release by British pianist Joseph Tong on the Quartz label contains some of Schumann’s most intimate and autobiographical music, notably the Fantasie in C, Op 17. Never one for disguising his emotions, Schumann described it as “perhaps the most impassioned music I have ever…
Pietà Premieres in London: Interview with composer Richard Blackford
In June 2019 Frances Wilson reviewed Pietà, a new choral work by Richard Blackford for The Cross-Eyed Pianist. Drawing on the theme of maternal grief and loss, Blackford took as his starting point the Stabat Mater. It is a hymn to Mary, and portrays her suffering as Jesus Christ’s mother at his crucifixion. In his exploration…
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