Nimbus originally released Alun Hoddinott's Piano Sonatas, Nos. 1-10, on two separate albums in 1993 and 1995, but in the interim, the prolific composer had already composed two more works in the series; thus, any numerical "clue" pointing to Scriabin's famous set of 10 sonatas is unintended. Yet there is a kind of mystical languor that runs through Hoddinott's sonatas that at times will remind listeners of Scriabin's vaporous soundworld, and his misty chromatic harmonies, complex cross-rhythms, and obsessively developed ...
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Nimbus originally released Alun Hoddinott's Piano Sonatas, Nos. 1-10, on two separate albums in 1993 and 1995, but in the interim, the prolific composer had already composed two more works in the series; thus, any numerical "clue" pointing to Scriabin's famous set of 10 sonatas is unintended. Yet there is a kind of mystical languor that runs through Hoddinott's sonatas that at times will remind listeners of Scriabin's vaporous soundworld, and his misty chromatic harmonies, complex cross-rhythms, and obsessively developed short motives are similar enough to those in Scriabin's music to make a fair case for some influence. Just as often, though, these multi-movement, highly contrapuntal pieces turn on forms adapted from Baroque and Classical models, so for all his apparent absorption of Scriabin's language, Hoddinott's formal ideas clearly owe a debt to earlier music, though veiled in a thoroughly modernist idiom. Pianist Martin Jones recorded this cycle in the composer's presence, which suggests that...
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