SOMM Recordings announces Cascade, the exhilarating new recital by pianist Cordelia Williams featuring music by Beethoven, Schumann, and Prokofiev.
Cascade explores music’s mercurial ability to change in an instant, to reveal depths beneath the surface, and to illustrate, as Williams says, “that the whole world can change entirely in one twist of perspective, one change of angle, to offer a glimpse of something bigger”.
Early and late Beethoven bookend the programme. Unpublished in his lifetime, the C major Bagatelle (WoO 56) flickers and glints, sparkles and surprises with kaleidoscope-like brilliance. His Op.126 Six Bagatelles – among the very last pieces he wrote for solo piano – alternate between the introspective and the garrulous, each turned inside out to reveal new facets and features.
A variegated collection of 20 miniatures with hints of Chopin, Scriabin and Shostakovich to be found, Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives, Op.22 are essentially a series of meditations, each individually pursuing a specific idea or mood while collectively exploring the hinterland between surface appearance and what lies beneath; and all expressed with comparable crystalline clarity.
Schumann’s Waldszenen (Forest Scenes), his last major cycle for solo piano, is an enchanted landscape lit up by beguiling pastoralism and shadow-cast by darker recesses of the imagination. Two sides of the same coin: Arcadia in excelsis, and red in tooth and claw.
Booklets notes, as with all of Cordelia Williams’ recent SOMM releases, have been written by Michael Quinn.
Piano winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition, Cordelia Williams’ previous SOMM releases include her acclaimed coupling of Bach and Arvo Pärt (SOMMCD 0186), hailed by International Piano as “a magnificently stimulating concept, brilliantly recognised”; well-received recitals of Schubert (SOMMCD 0127) and Schumann (SOMMCD 0150); and Nightlight (SOMMCD 0639), which Fanfare hailed for Williams’ “spectacular playing” and which Gramophone described as “extraordinary”.
On This Recording
- Bagatelle in C Major, WoO 56 (2:13)
- Lentamente (1:20)
- Andante (1:27)
- Allegretto (0:58)
- Animato (0:59)
- Molto giocoso (0:26)
- Con eleganza (0:28)
- Pittoresco (2:14)
- Comodo (1:15)
- Allegretto tranquillo (1:20)
- Ridicolosamente (0:52)
- Con vivacità (1:12)
- Assai moderato (0:57)
- Allegretto (0:52)
- Feroce (1:08)
- Inquieto (0:51)
- Dolente (1:56)
- Poetico (1:00)
- Con una dolce lentezza (1:19)
- Presto agitatissimo e molto accentuato (0:46)
- Lento (1:57)
- Eintritt (2:05)
- Jäger auf der Lauer (1:36)
- Einsame Blumen (1:48)
- Verrufene Stelle (3:19)
- Freundliche Landschaft (1:15)
- Herberge (2:00)
- Vogel als Prophet (3:02)
- Jagdlied (2:48)
- Abschied (3:57)
- I. Andante con moto, Cantabile e compiacevole (2:38)
- II. Allegro (1:49)
- III. Andante, Cantabile e grazioso (2:34)
- IV. Presto (3:57)
- V. Quasi allegretto (2:09)
- VI. Presto (4:26)
