Gottschalk - Piano Music Volume 5
Philip Martin (piano)
CD that hasn't been recorded by Philip Martin, the ideal exponent, but here's another whole collection of surprises – again a real enchantment from start to finish. It's interesting to hear...
Gottschalk - Piano Music Volume 5
Philip Martin (piano)
Purchase product
CD that hasn't been recorded by Philip Martin, the ideal exponent, but here's another whole collection of surprises – again a real enchantment from start to finish. It's interesting to hear...
About
This is the fifth disc in our ongoing Gottschalk series and the success of the project means that what we originally expected to be a few highlights discs seems likely to become the first complete recording of the composer's output for solo piano. We are now well past the half-way point and another 2-3 CDs should encompass the project. All Gottschalk's usual hallmarks are hereCaribbean rhythms, tear-jerking melodies, salon polkas, national melodieswrapped up in the most elegant 19th-century virtuoso pianism. The repertoire includes several of the composer's best known pieces such as the hugely virtuosic 'Tremolo' (the last piece Gottschalk ever played as he collapsed during a performance of it and died shortly after of a ruptured appendix) or the Cuban inspired 'El Cocoye', all played in his usual idiomatic style by Philip Martin, by critical consent the foremost exponent of Gottschalk playing today.
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
2010
CD that hasn't been recorded by Philip Martin, the ideal exponent, but here's another whole collection of surprises – again a real enchantment from start to finish. It's interesting to hear Gottschalk's Op 1, the Polka de salon, published in Paris, which he wrote in his mid-teens. No particular character yet but genuine charm. More typical of the pianist-composer as pop star is Elcocoyé, which gives a local carnival tune a flashy setting and brought the house down for Gottschalk's first recital in Havana in 1854. Solitude is a pretty nocturne inspired by Lamartine, Chopinesque but simpler. The middle section is a fine example of Martin's totally natural, relaxed melodic playing which perfectly fits the serenity of Gottschalk's lyricism. Martin knows how to pace Gottschalk's Caribbean syncopations, too, and is up to all the pyrotechnics.
