The piano music of the British Isles generation preceding Edward Elgar has been almost completely ignored on recordings, and for that reason alone this recording by Australian pianist Sam Haywood is welcome. Likewise, the tradition of writing cycles of preludes, or preludes and fugues, did not pass directly from Bach to Chopin to Shostakovich; there were many intervening steps. These two sets of little preludes come from late in the career of Irish composer Charles Villiers Stanford, after he had been largely, to his ...
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The piano music of the British Isles generation preceding Edward Elgar has been almost completely ignored on recordings, and for that reason alone this recording by Australian pianist Sam Haywood is welcome. Likewise, the tradition of writing cycles of preludes, or preludes and fugues, did not pass directly from Bach to Chopin to Shostakovich; there were many intervening steps. These two sets of little preludes come from late in the career of Irish composer Charles Villiers Stanford, after he had been largely, to his considerable resentment, eclipsed by Elgar. Haywood feels free to excerpt the two sets of preludes and take it out of key order, which doesn't say much for the coherence of the publications as a whole. But the composer may have meant the pieces more to be played singly or in small groups than from start to finish, and there are enjoyable stops along the way. The pieces form a sort of music-historical survey, with clear homages to Bach mixed in with references to Chopin's preludes (sample...
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