John McCabe: Piano Music
John McCabe (piano)
Awards:
-
Sunday Times, 2015, Albums of the Year
This British composer-pianist was both admired and promoted by John Ogdon, and here we see why: his music was intriguing, intricately-woven and, though, largely atonal, easy on the ear.
John McCabe: Piano Music
John McCabe (piano)
Purchase product
Awards:
-
Sunday Times, 2015, Albums of the Year
This British composer-pianist was both admired and promoted by John Ogdon, and here we see why: his music was intriguing, intricately-woven and, though, largely atonal, easy on the ear.
About
John McCabe was a composer-pianist who excelled internationally in both fields. For his own instrument he wrote a distinguished series of works in which variation form is a recurrent feature. Seventeen years separate the Variations, Op. 22, described by John Ogdon as standing “closer to Rachmaninov’s use of variation technique than to Brahms’s”, and the masterly, unorthodox and original Haydn Variations, McCabe’s longest solo piano work. The evocative Bagatelles and Studies are notable for their unceasing exploration of pianistic and compositional techniques.
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
-
Sunday Times2015Albums of the Year
January 2016
This British composer-pianist was both admired and promoted by John Ogdon, and here we see why: his music was intriguing, intricately-woven and, though, largely atonal, easy on the ear.
2nd August 2015
These last, amenable demonstrations of the 12-tone technique have a positively Webernian compression, each little movement memorably etched. The plain-titled Variations is an admirably sinewy, energetic essay, distilling the influence of Messiaen.
13th August 2015
John McCabe was a musician of steely, graceful intellect. As both pianist and composer he could distil huge ideas into finely-sculpted gestures...What’s wonderful about listening to McCabe play his own music is trying to work out where composer ended and pianist began, then realising it was all one and the same.
