American composer Judith Lang Zaimont has a distinctive style that has lasted through multiple changes of fashion. She has a knack for drawing on Romantic traditions without being retro or sentimental, remaining loosely tonal but deploying unusual structural devices. Zaimont has written works in various media but trained as a pianist, and these three attractive works, highly idiomatic to the piano and each having received multiple recordings, make a good place to start with her music. The Sonata for piano is a highly ...
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American composer Judith Lang Zaimont has a distinctive style that has lasted through multiple changes of fashion. She has a knack for drawing on Romantic traditions without being retro or sentimental, remaining loosely tonal but deploying unusual structural devices. Zaimont has written works in various media but trained as a pianist, and these three attractive works, highly idiomatic to the piano and each having received multiple recordings, make a good place to start with her music. The Sonata for piano is a highly virtuosic piece whose last movement recalls some of Prokofiev's toccata-like finales. It's a popular piano competition piece, and pianist Christopher Atzinger obviously knows it well. The opening movement adheres to sonata form, but defines its subject group by texture as well as thematic material. The work contains hints of the jazz and ragtime with which Zaimont began her performing career. Nocturne: La fin de siècle, composed in 1979, expands on the language of the Chopin Nocturne. A...
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