Studio Masters

Clare Hammond – Variations (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:43 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

For her fifth release on BIS Clare Hammond has constructed an adventurous programme of twentieth and twenty-first-century variations for piano. From the imposing Chaconne by Sofia Gubaidulina, to the tender grief of Paul Hindemith’s Variations or Aaron Copland’s bold and uncompromising proclamation, the programme presents a fresh perspective on the genre.

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Clare Hammond – Saxton: Piano Works (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:42 minutes | 863 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Toccata Classics

In its bell-like sonorities, clear textures and ritual manner, the piano music of Robert Saxton (born in London in 1953) suggests an almost oriental fascination with light and the way light refracts and diffracts – and yet it is audibly music written by an Englishman. In the two Books of Saxton’s Hortus Musicae in particular, this fascinating confluence generates a soundworld somewhere downstream from Takemitsu and Tippett, giving these gardens of music both a ceremonial dignity and sense of spring growth. Hailed as a pianist of ‘amazing power and panache’ (The Daily Telegraph), Clare Hammond is recognized for the virtuosity and authority of her performances and has developed a ‘reputation for brilliantly imaginative concert programmes’ (BBC Music Magazine, ‘Rising Star’). In 2016, she won the ‘Young Artist Award’ of the Royal Philharmonic Society in recognition of outstanding achievements. She is a champion of modern repertoire: this is her sixth album of music by a living composer, and she has given 35 world premieres to date. Clare completed a BA at Cambridge University, where she obtained a double first in music, and undertook postgraduate study with Ronan O’Hora at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

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Clare Hammond – Mysliveček: Complete Music for Keyboard (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:38 minutes | 1,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

Born in Prague in 1737, Josef Mysliveček spent most of his short life in Italy, where for a while he enjoyed success with his many operas, and became known as ‘Il Boemo’ (‘The Bohemian’). It was also in Italy – in Bologna – that he first met Mozart, in 1770. Their paths would cross again and in letters Mozart wrote about him with affection, describing him as full of ‘fire, spirit and life’. Mysliveček’s influence is apparent in Mozart’s early operas, violin concertos, symphonies and keyboard music. His music soon fell out of fashion, however, and it is only recent decades that have seen more interest in works such as the wind octets, violin concertos and symphonies. In comparison, Mysliveček’s output for keyboard has been somewhat neglected, something which the English pianist Clare Hammond seeks to rectify with her latest disc. The keyboard concertos in particular have barely seen the light of day since Mysliveček’s death and the second concerto is recorded for the first time on this disc which gathers all of the extant keyboard works. Clare Hammond, whose imaginative recording projects on BIS have received international acclaim, is here supported in the concertos by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by no one less than Nicholas McGegan, whose expertise in 18th-century style is undisputed.

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Clare Hammond – Etude (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:22 minutes | 1021 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS Records AB

As Clare Hammond writes in the liner notes to her thought-provoking selection of piano études, the genre, at its best, ‘combines the visceral excitement of technical display with expressive, coloristic and compositional ingenuity’. Opening with three studies from Sergei Lyapunov’s 12 Études d’exécution transcendante, composed around the turn of the last century, the programme demonstrates the tremendous developments that have taken place in writing for the piano over the past 120 years. Lyapunov modelled his ample études directly on Liszt’s set with the same title, and they epitomise the drama and passion of late Romanticism, fused with a distinctly Russian colour. In comparison, Szymanowski’s set of 12 Studies, written in 1916, are miniatures whose mercurial timbres and fleet textures suggest an affinity with Debussy’s études, composed one year earlier. ‘Twelve small piano pieces forming one whole, interesting technically, difficult’ is how Szymanowski described the set to his publisher. Born in the same year that Szymanowski died, Nikolai Kapustin initially set out to become a classical pianist, but at the age of 16 began to study jazz. In his early twenties he decided to focus on composition, and the Five Études in Different Intervals are characteristic of his output in that they fuse formal classical structures with jazz idioms. Of the four composers represented on this disc, Unsuk Chin is the only one who never trained as a pianist. Her six Études, the most recent set on this disc, are natural successors to those by Ligeti with whom Chin studied and reflect her fascination with virtuosity and the playful side of music-making.

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