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Peter Donohoe plays Messiaen, Mussorgsky & Ravel | Signum SIGCD566

Peter Donohoe plays Messiaen, Mussorgsky & Ravel

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Label: Signum

Cat No: SIGCD566

Barcode: 0635212056622

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Instrumental

Release Date: 15th March 2019

Contents

About

A new collection exploring depictions of ‘pictures’ in music performed by Peter Donohoe – acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time for his musicianship, stylistic versatility and commanding technique.

One of the pinnacles of nineteenth-century pianism, Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition broke new frontiers in its writing for the piano through its use of ringing bell-like sonorities, dramatic juxtaposition of registers and dynamics, its approach to resonance, percussive octaves and rapid hand-alternations and sheer grandeur of sound. Introducing new ideas about virtuosity that owe much to orchestral thinking in the ways the full range of the piano’s tone-colours are explored, this work requires immense stamina through combining great finger dexterity with unbridled power.

Mussorgsky’s masterpiece is coupled here with works by Ravel and Messiaen – composers who were indebted to the innovations of their Russian predecessor.

Miroirs comprises a set of five pieces evoking contrasting moods and pianistic characters. Far from being Impressionist – a movement with which Ravel had little real affiliation – the ‘Mirrors’ of the title suggest more Symbolist associations in that the individual pieces explore ambiguities between supposed reality and ‘reflected’ simulation. Ravel was particularly fascinated by a line from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “the eye sees not itself, but by reflection, by some other things.”

An unusually non-descriptive work for Messiaen, without religious references or birdsong, Cantéyodjayâ is about musical process and is constructed as a mosaic-like collage in which a jaunty rhythmic refrain is contrasted with a multiplicity of contrasting ideas, many of which are reworkings from his gargantuan Turangalîla-Symphonie.

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