The world premiere recording of new Flemish modern romantic piano music by Piet Jozef Swerts, written for a new Flemish piano, played by the composer and performed on the revolutionary straight-strung piano by Maene.

Piet Jozef Swerts (b. 1960) is one of Belgium’s prime composers of accessible music in the postmodernist vein. On his first Antarctica release, he sets himself the considerable challenge of assembling a largescale piano texture from smaller sonatas without relying on worn-out romantic formats. Following the example of Bach’s Das wohltemperierte Klavier, Swerts writes and plays polyphonic music with a modern twist, taking off with Scarlatti at his jazziest, but also echoing Mozart, Wagner, and Purcell. Framed in the baroque tradition, the new music of Swerts sounds scintillatingly smart, but not cerebral, and his straight-strung piano embodies the old-new paradox by fusing modern Steinway comfort with the colour and register versatility of a pianoforte.

Swerts is also a conductor and pianist of international acclaim; his substantial catalogue of more than 240 works include stage, orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal and piano works. Since 1982, he is Professor of Composition and Orchestration at the Leuven College of Arts (LUCA), now the Department of Drama and Music associated with the Catholic University of Leuven.

He has been invited as guest professor in the Sweelinck Conservatory, Amsterdam, Netherlands, in the Department of Electronic Music at the University of Huddersfield, UK, the Polytechnic Institute in Castelo Branco, Portugal, as well as in the Polytechnic Institute North Karelia, Conservatory of Joensuu, Finland, and the Conservatory of Barcelona, Spain.