GD 123 Ivo KALTCHEV piano - CHARLES T. GRIFFES, PIANO Works
Issued: 1998
Style: Classical Music
Company: Gega New, GD123
A young and talented pianist, Ivo Kaltchev plays compositions by the American composer Charles T. Griffes (1884-1920), led by the idea to present an unknown and very interesting author. Having lived only 36 years, a pupil of the known German composer Humperdinck, he created more than a hundred works for stage, orchestral music, chamber-instrumental and clavier opuses. For the CD Ivo Kaltchev has selected the Roman Sketches - four poetic musical pictures satiated with sound beauty, re-creating them with an impressionistic palette of moods. The pianist performs the pieces with ethereality, subtlety and magnificence of varied tonal "chiaroscuro" and nuances in the dynamics. His mastership and love for GriffesÂ’ works are felt in The Pleasure-Dome of Kubla Khan (imbued with characteristic modes and orientalisms ) and in the pieces: A Winter Landscape, Legend, De Profundis, infiltrated with the aesthetics of the German Romanticism. To the stylistic development of Griffes testifies the Sonata from 1918, which is indicative of the influence of modernism from the beginning of the 20th century. Besides an encounter with one of the greatest figures of American music, the recording is a document demonstrating the artistic class of Ivo Kaltchev, a musician of subtle sensitivity, superb technique liberating the flight of his imagination, an erudite and master of the sound picture.
Contents:
Roman Sketches, Op. 7
• The White Peacock (1915)
• Nightfall (1916)
• The Fountain of Acqua Paola (1916)
• Clouds (1916)
• The Pleasure-Dome of Kubia Khan (1912; rev. 1915)
• A Winter Landscape (1912) - World Premiere Recording
• Legend (1915)
• De Profundis (1915)
• Piano Sonata (1918; rev. 1919)
view full size
