Impressively and persuasively played, Geoffrey Douglas Madge's disc of the piano music of Ernst Krenek is a welcome addition to the slender catalog of Krenek's piano music. And with the two world-premiere performances on this disc, that catalog has grown by almost 45 minutes. The Toccata and Chaconne, Op. 13, written in 1922 when the composer was 20, is a monstrous work of immense and awful depths, perhaps a bit excessive in its length and its expressive extremity, but still an amazing work of music. The Variations (12) in ...
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Impressively and persuasively played, Geoffrey Douglas Madge's disc of the piano music of Ernst Krenek is a welcome addition to the slender catalog of Krenek's piano music. And with the two world-premiere performances on this disc, that catalog has grown by almost 45 minutes. The Toccata and Chaconne, Op. 13, written in 1922 when the composer was 20, is a monstrous work of immense and awful depths, perhaps a bit excessive in its length and its expressive extremity, but still an amazing work of music. The Variations (12) in Three Movements, Op. 79, written in 1937 and revised in 1940 and 1957, is just as expressive, but the language is contrapuntal and the rhetoric is austere. These works are not just additions to Krenek's catalog, but are also major additions to the piano music of the twentieth century.Madge plays them about as well as it is possible to play them. His virtuosity is impeccable. His sense of scale and scope is appropriately grand. His ability to give voice to Krenek's expressive...
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