This recital of contemporary piano music is notable for its lack of any biographical material whatsoever, about either the composers or the pianist. Presumably pianist Danny Holt wants the music, apparently all American, to speak for itself. For the most part, it does. Much of it is representational, and even if you might not always guess the rather quizzical subjects of David Lang's memory pieces (1997), one of which is called "diet coke," the music on the album as a whole has a way of picking up older styles such as ...
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This recital of contemporary piano music is notable for its lack of any biographical material whatsoever, about either the composers or the pianist. Presumably pianist Danny Holt wants the music, apparently all American, to speak for itself. For the most part, it does. Much of it is representational, and even if you might not always guess the rather quizzical subjects of David Lang's memory pieces (1997), one of which is called "diet coke," the music on the album as a whole has a way of picking up older styles such as impressionism and mixing them with minimalism, popular and world influences, and other contemporary ideas. The least representational and perhaps the most compelling work is the opening In Time of Desperation by Caleb Burhans, composed in memory of Luciano Berio. It seems at first to consist of simple, lightly syncopated noodling on the notes of diatonic chords, of the sort many an amateur pianist produces. But it develops in quite unexpected ways, avoiding minimalist repetition and...
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