Robert Saxton: Piano Music
Clare Hammond (piano)
These two collections are enchanting: at once playful and serious, exploratory, intellectually vigorous and, very often, deeply poignant.
Robert Saxton: Piano Music
Clare Hammond (piano)
Purchase product
These two collections are enchanting: at once playful and serious, exploratory, intellectually vigorous and, very often, deeply poignant.
About
In its bell-like sonorities, clear textures and ritual manner, the piano music of Robert Saxton (born in London in 1953) suggests an almost oriental fascination with light and the way light refracts and diffracts – and yet it is audibly music written by an Englishman. In the two Books of Saxton's Hortus Musicae in particular, this fascinating confluence generates a soundworld somewhere downstream from Takemitsu and Tippett, giving these gardens of music both a ceremonial dignity and sense of spring growth.
Contents and tracklist
- Clare Hammond (piano)
- Recorded: 21-22 August 2017
- Recording Venue: St John the Evangelist Church, Iffley Road, Oxford, UK
- Clare Hammond (piano)
- Recorded: 21-22 August 2017
- Recording Venue: St John the Evangelist Church, Iffley Road, Oxford, UK
Awards and reviews
August 2018
These two collections are enchanting: at once playful and serious, exploratory, intellectually vigorous and, very often, deeply poignant.
June 2018
Central to the music’s efficaciousness is Hammond herself, of course. Book 1 arguably foregrounds the surface qualities of her playing, but Book 2 delves deeper, challenging the pianist to maintain clarity and transparency in often more complex and multi-layered settings.
8th April 2018
Saxton’s work unites craftsmanly rigour and a wide-ranging fantasy, the latter quality being explicit here in a double sequence entitled Hortus Musicae, Book 1 and Book 2.
