Serious and contemplative music - ranging from early keyboard music to the romantic era and early 20th century.

43 MP3 Songs
CLASSICAL: Piano solo



Details:
about the artsit:
A native of the Philippines, Albert Tiu has amassed an impressive list of awards and accomplishments throughout his career. He has won competitions on several continents, and is a laureate of the 1996 Honens International Piano Competition. A graduate of New York's Juilliard School, Mr. Tiu's William Petschek Award from that school led to his New York debut at Alice
Tully Hall. Tiu has performed as a soloist with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Hamburg Symphony and England's Northern Sinfonia, as well as several orchestras in Canada, the U.S., South Africa and the Philippines. He is also an active chamber music collaborator, appearing with
Canada's St. Lawrence String Quartet among others.

liner notes:

Variations based upon a theme â whether a self composed theme or one from another source â are among the most common and indeed basic forms of music. âThe principle...is fundamental to composition,â states the Groveâs Fifth Edition, and nearly every composer has used the genre to some degree. All the works on this recording feature variation, and four of the five pieces bear the word in their titles. Some qualifying, perhaps, is needed for the one work which does not use âvariationâ as part of its name. A chaconne is a musical form based on an unvarying and repeated ground bass. A theme played in the upper voice or voices above the ground bass will, upon the reappearance of the beginning of the ground bass, be subjected to variations, often increasingly complex ones, as the work progresses. The chaconne used by Ferruccio Busoni (1866- 1924) is taken from Bachâs Partita for Solo Violin, BWV 1004. The final movement of the partita, this particular chaconne is a vast set of 34 variations of the opening eight-bar phrase. In realizing this idiosyncratic solo string piece for piano, Busoni ingeniously reconceived it as a tour de force for piano, his chosen instrument. Busoni, during much of his career, was known at least as much for his scholarly writings (including his numerous Bach editions) as his own compositions. But he was an outstanding pianist, and his many works for piano are of the bravura sort. As Bach was a central part of Busoniâs scholarly work, the baroque master also figured in a number of Busoniâs arrangements. Most of Busoniâs transcriptions of Bach were taken from the baroque masterâs organ repertoire, though he was not alone in being attracted to this particular chaconne. Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms had adapted it to piano before Busoni. What Busoni manages to do, most agree, is give the chaconne an almost organ-like sonority and richness. âIt was truly one of the rare and impossible grandeurs of the piano,â wrote H.T. Parker in 1922. Busoni himself felt that the transcription came closer to putting across the âuniversalityâ of the music. âTranscription has made it possible for the piano to take possession of the entire literature of music,â Busoni once wrote. Organ music reached an apex in the music of Bach, but a cornerstone of the structure which puts Bach at the summit is the pioneering music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. âThe position of (Sweelinck) in the history of organ music of the early decades of the (17th) century suggests that he must represent the culmination of an extensive previous development in Dutch music,â wrote organ scholar John R. Shannon. Sweelinck, the son of an organist, spent his entire life within a few miles of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, venturing from it only to supervise and advise construction or reconstruction of organs at other churches elsewhere in the Netherlands. Yet his teachings, and his style of organ playing (he is credited with being the first to give the pedal a significant role in organ music) spread much further afield. It is highly unlikely that all of Sweelinckâs music has survived to reach us today, but among his output is a great deal of both vocal and organ music. A great influence on those who came after him â a direct line that reached northern Germany and those who influenced Bach â Sweelinckâs own music was influenced by the English virginalists, notably John Bull. Another facet of English music, namely the island nationâs fondness for variations on popular song, shows itself most brightly in the set of variations Sweelinck wrote on the song Mein junges Leben hat einâ End (âMy young days have endedâ). While most of the variations Sweelinck wrote are of sacred melodies, we know of at least eight secular songs for which he composed variations, in which he allowed, perhaps, more personal feelings to emerge. As with his other settings of secular songs, Sweelinck begins the Mein junges Leben variations right away, without presenting the theme alone. The melody remains mostly in the treble part, allowing freedom in the other voices, varying greatly from section to section. The same volume of Grove which underlines the importance of the variation form rather broadly states, âThe finest variations since Beethoven are the numerous sets by Brahms.â There were two sets of variations written by Johannes Brahms that were eventually published as his Op.21. The second was based on a Hungarian theme from Brahmsâ days as accompanist to Hungarian violinist Reményi. The first is a group of eleven variations based on a theme Brahms penned himself. The Variations on an Original Theme was composed in 1857, when he was just 24 years old, and like the Hungarian Song Variations of the year before, seem to have provided him with a bit of a busmanâs holiday as he grappled with his First Piano Concerto. The actual theme of the Op.21 No. 1 is straightforward â tender and even fond. The first few variations do not alter this gentle mood, exploring different sonorities of the theme. The fifth variation features the left hand shadowing the right in a canon, leading to real separation of parts in the next two. The minor-key Allegro of the eighth variation leads straight into a brusque dance, filled with tricky me
changes, in the ninth.
A restless, rumbling tenth variation is resolved by the last one, nearly a quarter of the length of the entire set. An expressive rhapsody based on the theme, this final variation ends tranquilly. For many, Aaron Coplandâs Piano Variations stands as a masterpiece of American piano music. But that is an opinion that has accrued over time. After Copland himself premiered the work in January, 1931, only a handful of progressively-minded music lovers seemed to see what the piece represented. In fact, for some of the emerging generation of musicians â Leonard Bernstein, Elliott Carter, David Diamond and others â the bleak, barbed set of variations heralded a new direction. âThe Piano Variations in particular became a kind of rallying cry,â writes Howard Pollack in his biography of Copland. An eleven-bar theme, centred around a four-note âcellâ (E, C, D-sharp and
C-sharp) is put through 20 variations, though Copland insisted that the work should be a continuously progressive whole, played without seams. Its rhythms have roots in jazz, but its harmonies â often dissonant and even harsh, with intervals of sevenths and ninths common â are highly original â âprophetic, harsh and wonderful,â said a young Bernstein. Copland dedicated the work to Canadian-born writer Gerald Sykes (1903- 1984), one of several people with whom Copland had a relationship which combined a certain sense of the paternal (on Coplandâs part) with romantic attachment. Much of the Piano Variations was written while the two shared a residence in Bedford, New York during 1930. Sergei Rachmaninovâs set of variations based on
Chopinâs Prelude in C minor, Op.28 No. 20, was the Russian composerâs first extended work for solo piano. It was composed during a fruitful period for Rachmaninov. His Second Piano Concerto had achieved astounding international success a little over two years before the variations were composed, and the work followed shortly after the composer had returned to Ivanovka from his honeymoon â one spent seeing several of Wagnerâs operas in Bayreuth. An interesting, and even ironic feature of the Chopin Variations is that Rachmaninov the pianist â and he was one of the 20th centuryâs absolute masters on the instrument â did not include this particular Chopin prelude among the works by Chopin he played in concert. Obviously, Rachmaninov the composer saw value in the piece, as a creative wellspring, that Rachmaninov the pianist did not. The first ten variations in the set are the shortest â and in fact, the variations tend to get longer as the work progresses â and all are in C minor. Mood and colour change rather dramatically as the eleventh variation ushers in the key of E-flat. The twelfth brings in a fugal passage, though it broadens out to an improvisatory feel as it concludes. Mystery imbues the thirteenth, while the fourteenth brings this section to a ringing close. The next four variations return to a minor key, F minor. The sixteenth is a rhapsodic, lyrical one â perhaps the workâs most passionate, and furthest removed from its Chopin original. The last four variations are the longest, and begin in A Major with the nineteenth variation giving a sense of festivity. There is a quiet respite in the 21st variation â a tender passage in D-flat which then gives way to the virtuosic and grand finale.

D.T. Baker © 2002