Gravitating towards American music – interview with Timo Andres

Composer and pianist Timo Andres photographed in January 2024. © Jason Marck It’ll be quite a week ahead for the Brooklyn-based composer and pianist Timo Andres. Not only is his new album coming out on Nonesuch Records, but Friday also sees the world premiere of his latest piano concerto, Made of Tunes (2023), with Aaron...

Incandescent intensity caught on disc – Pierre-Laurent Aimard, the San Francisco Symphony and Esa-Pekka Salonen embrace Bartók

”One of the most important things I learned from Stravinsky was daring”, the terminally ill Béla Bartók confined to his physician during his last days, exiled in New York City. Regarding his staggering output, the composer’s verdict is perhaps at its most befitting when applied to his three piano concertos – game-changers of the medium...

Cornerstone Abrahamsen album from WDR, highlighting with Tamara Stefanovich on the left hand concerto

”I’ve always been preoccupied with time – both the very fast moving time and the very slow time, like in slow motion”, Hans Abrahamsen writes in his program note for the new Music Edition Winter & Winter album Left, alone, named after the composer’s exquisite 2014-15 piano concerto for the left hand, given here in...

Stirring world premiere recording for Teddy Abrams’s Piano Concerto from Yuja Wang and the Louisville Orchestra

Pianist Yuja Wang’s latest album, The American Project, is one of those musical treasures that never fail to put a smile on the listener’s face. Coupled on the new DG affair, two works written for the pianist are heard in world premiere recordings of absorbing energy and admirable dexterity. Heralded by Michael Tilson Thomas’s witty,...