Szabolcs Esztényi was born in Hungary but moved to Poland in 1969. The music heard on this disc falls broadly into the category of contemporary Polish music that rejects both serialist systematics and minimalist simplicities. Beyond that it's hard to pigeonhole, and it's original enough in conception and form to attract the general listener. Esztényi is a performing pianist as well as a composer, and the titles of the works here -- study, toccata, concertino -- indicate a link to traditional genres of piano music. The music ...
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Szabolcs Esztényi was born in Hungary but moved to Poland in 1969. The music heard on this disc falls broadly into the category of contemporary Polish music that rejects both serialist systematics and minimalist simplicities. Beyond that it's hard to pigeonhole, and it's original enough in conception and form to attract the general listener. Esztényi is a performing pianist as well as a composer, and the titles of the works here -- study, toccata, concertino -- indicate a link to traditional genres of piano music. The music does have a strong formal emphasis, but it is in no way neo-classic in flavor. It is atonal but uses tonal foci at the local level; as the conceptually involved but informative liner notes by Bohdan Pociej put it, Esztényi uses both "centripetal" (tonal) and "centrifugal" (atonal) forces. The most distinctive feature of Esztényi's career as a pianist is its emphasis on improvisation. He won Poland's national piano improvisation contest, an interesting thing in itself, in 1968....
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