Stephanie's Pillowbook

I love disco.

1) Risco Connection – Ain’t No Stopping Us Now. A Jamaican extended remix of the McFadden & Whitehead classic. The song itself is dispatched pretty quickly and we are left with a loping bass-line, a chugging reggae rhythm on the guitar, latin-y drums and pans, and soaring over it all the most fabulous strings. This is the sexiest track ever!

2) Sparkle – Handsome Man. Mixed by Larry Levan and about scoping a… handsome man, this also has a slight Caribbean feel.

3) Air Power – Welcome to the Disco. Ten minutes more of gloriously swooping strings.

4) Aquarian Dream – Fantasy. Produced by Norman Connors, a short, sharp, punchy track.

5) Loleatta Holloway – Love Sensation. One of the great divas of the disco era. This song has been sampled on a hundred house tracks (most notoriously, perhaps by Black Box on Ride on Time). This is the Tom Moulton mix. Sheer ecstasy.

6) Inner Life – Moment of my Life. Another track on Salsoul and featuring another great diva, Jocelyn Brown.

7) Musique – Glide. A Patrick Adams production – sort of deliriously drag-queeny in style!

8) Metropole – Miss Manhattan. A wonderful piece of Italo-Disco from 1981. I immediately fell in love with it a couple of years ago when I first heard it and it has probably been my most played track ever since. A gorgeous song, excellently orchestrated – and like all good disco its sound and atmosphere strikes a perfect balance between hedonism and melancholy.

9) The Fantastic Aleems – Hooked On Your Love. The deepest bass line, chunky guitars, soaring strings, Leroy Burgess’s sexy voice, feverish girl backing singers, and congas playing like butterfly kisses down your spine. Is there any better dance music?

10) Silver, Platinum and Gold – I Got a Thing. An incredibly powerful track sung by three very feisty women. Get ready to be blown away!

Now tell me disco was all a load of kitsch!!

I’ve been listening to a lot of passionate, melancholy and melodic chamber music by Russian composers these past few months.

1) All of I knew of Alexander Alyabiev until recently was that he composed a famous song called The Nightingale. Well, it appears he led an eventful life in the first half of the nineteenth century – a soldier, who distinguished himself in the Napoleonic Campaign, and inveterate gambler he was sent to Siberia for many years after being wrongfully accused of murder. Anyway, not long ago I discovered a recording of chamber music made by Emil Gilels and members of the Beethoven Quartet. From it here is the Adagio of Alyabiev’s Piano Trio in a minor.

2) Mikhail Glinka, more or less a contemporary of Alyabiev, is, of course, far better known. I particularly enjoy his delightfully tuneful Grand Piano Sextet in E flat. This is the Allegro as played by Mikhail Pletnev and Ensemble.

3) Alexander Borodin was by profession a chemist who made several important discoveries. His musical output is therefore small – but of high quality. Here is the playful Scherzo with a beautifully lyrical middle-section from his Piano Quintet in c minor.

4) Anton Rubinstein was undoubtedly the giant of Russian music – perhaps the finest pianist of the nineteenth century after Liszt, he was said to physically resemble Beethoven and certainly possessed something of the same titanic power in his personality and playing, and his influence on other pianists and composers was enormous. Even though I have heard much of Rubinstein’s piano music I don’t think I would ever have guessed he was the composer of this Quintet for Piano and Wind Instruments in F Op.55. From it here is the lovely slow movement, Andante.

5) I have a great fondness for some of the works of Sergei Lyapunov, especially his very passionate Sextet for Piano and Strings in b flat minor Op.63. This is the Scherzo.

6) The chamber music of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov are not nearly as familiar as his orchestral music or opera. Well, the Quintet for Piano and Wind Instruments in B flat is just as colourful and as originally scored. This is the utterly charming finale, Allegretto.

7) Alexander Glazunov’s seven String Quartets are still new works for me. This is the tunefully contrapuntal first movement, Andante – Allegro, of the Fifth Quartet in d minor Op.70 played by the Shostakovich Quartet.

8) Alexander Grechaninov’s Piano Trio in c minor Op.38 is a gorgeously romantic piece which should be better-known. Here is the first movement, Allegro passionato.

9) It appears that Sergei Taneyev is often dismissed as an uninspired academic composer. How anyone can think that after hearing some of the chamber music is quite beyond me. What could be more impassioned yet tightly argued and intricate? Take this Allegro brillante from the Piano Quartet in E Op.20…

10) Rachmaninov’s first Trio Elegiaque in g minor, imbued with a deep melancholy, is one of my favourite works of that composer.

Well, my last compilation had Baroque keyboard music played “straight”, more or less, on the piano. Now I want to survey some transcriptions – same era, same instrument, but rather more elaborated.

1) Ottorino Respighi “freely” transcribed a number of lute pieces from the 16th and 17th centuries as a set of suites for orchestra and then arranged them for piano in his collection Antiche Danza ed Arie. This is the very attractive, jaunty and modern-sounding Bergamasca by Bernardo Gianoncelli.

2) Leopold Godowsky made a number of transcriptions of Baroque music for his collection entitled Renaissance. As usual with Godowsky inner voices and piquant harmonies have been added. Here is his version of a Courante by Jean-Baptiste Lully.

3) Sergei Prokofiev was more likely to transcribe his own music than those of other composers. He did make this rather serene but austere (and only partial) transcription of Dietrich Buxtehude’s organ Prelude and Fugue in D.

4) Bela Bartok made a number of transcriptions of Italian Baroque keyboard music to play at his own piano recitals. He is sparer with virtuosic flourishes and additions than some of his contemporaries but still converts the music into a modern pianistic style. This is his transcription of Michelangelo Rossi’s Toccata No.2 in a minor.

5) Here is Percy Grainger’s brilliant and lyrical ramble through John Dowland’s song Now, O Now, I Needs Must Part. Utterly anachronistic – but surely marvellous and enchanting?

6) Moritz Moszkowski was another virtuoso pianist of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century who, like so many at the time, enjoyed making transcriptions to play at concerts. Handel’s aria Lascia ch’io pianga from Rinaldo, music of a simple but sublime unadorned beauty, might have seemed an unlikely candidate for such a transcription. It’s lovely, though…

7) Rachmaninov transcribed three movements from Bach’s Violin Partita No.3 in E BWV 1006. They are cheeky little arrangements almost expressly designed to irritate the purist. The alterations are delightful, though, even if the final result is as much Rachmaninov as it is Bach. This is the Prelude.

8) In my Baroque Piano compilation I included a harpsichord piece of Jean-Philippe Rameau played fairly straight by Robert Casadesus although in a pianistic style with many a Romantic nuance. Here is a much more extravagant and impressionistic transcription of Le rappel des oiseaux made by Ignaz Freidman with double notes galore.

9) Enrique Granados transcribed twenty-odd of the Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti making them more pianistic (according to the taste of the early twentieth century) – doubling notes, adapting harmonies, adding phrasing and dynamics. This is his version of the Sonata K102 – slower but more decorative than the original.

10) Well, we can’t have Baroque transcriptions for the piano without something by Ferruccio Busoni. Here is one of my favourites: the magnificent and resounding organ Prelude and Fugue in D BWV532 played here by Emil Gilels. I remember very clearly the first time I heard this piece. It was sometime in the latter half of the 1990s. It was early autumn and my parents were on holiday and I was using their house to study because it was so peaceful. I had spent the day making notes for my thesis. As the afternoon wore on I put on a new CD that had arrived that morning from Amazon – a Busoni recital by Geoffrey Tozer. The final work was this Prelude and Fugue transcription. I got up from the table and stood in the kitchen in the twilight and stared out into the garden. There’s something so ecstatic and profoundly right about the fugue that tears rolled down my cheeks. They were tears of joy at being alive.

It has become something of an article of faith that classical music should be performed on the instruments for which they were intended – for only then, it is argued, can the music be played in the correct manner and style and only then will it sound right. Pianists in particular, however, have long been interested in appropriating music written for the harpsichord or clavichord. It cannot be denied that the effect is very different. One might even talk, in some cases, of re-creation. Yet when the results are beautiful does it matter? I appreciate authenticity – but authenticity does not trump art. Anyway, I find it difficult to believe that any Baroque composer would be opposed to such transcriptions in principle considering how central the practice was to many at that time.

1) So, first, here is Girolamo Frescobaldi’s Toccata No.1 played by Francesco Tristano Schlimé.

2) Next a subtle and profound Pavan (MB15) by Orlando Gibbons played on the piano by Daniel Ben-Pienaar.

3) Glenn Gould made a famous recording of early keyboard music which in the very anachronistic manner of its performance somehow brings the music to life. From that record this is William Byrd’s First Pavan and Gailliard.

4) The Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti have long attracted pianists – they are irresistibly charming, varied, and beautiful. There are innumerable recordings – from them I have chosen the Sonata in b minor K87 in a very late recording made by Vladimir Horowitz. It is a performance which demonstrates perfectly how the piano brings out the melodic line and with it the almost vocal expressivity of this music.

5) Jean-Philippe Rameau’s piece for harpsichord, Le rappel des oiseaux used to be a great favourite with concert pianists. Here it is played with great delicacy by Robert Casadesus.

6) It is often thought that the keyboard music of French composers like Rameau and the Couperins was particularly resistant to being played on the piano. It is true that the music makes great use of the peculiarities of the harpsichord and that it is very difficult to transfer the ornamentation, for instance, to the piano in an effective way. But listen to Angela Hewitt playing Les Ombres Errantes by Francois Couperin. Is it not lovely?

7) Raymond Lewenthal made a fascinating LP once of Toccatas by various composers up to the present (including one by the pianist himself). The first on his programme was this brilliant little Toccata in g minor by Azzolino Bernardino della Ciaja.

8) Antonio Soler may well have been taught by Scarlatti – his many sonatas are as touching and playful as the older composer’s. Here is one in c sharp minor played by Alicia De Larrocha.

9) The Portuguese Carlos Seixas was similarly influenced by Scarlatti in his hundred or so sonatas. This, though, is a short and emotional Menuet in f minor played most movingly by Maria Grinberg.

10) Giovanni Battista Pescetti’s Sonata in c minor in an early recording by Clara Haskil.

11) Does it matter on which keyboard instrument you play Handel’s fabulous Chaconne in G (HWV435)? The harpsichord might be first choice but a version for piano only adds to and illuminates such music – don’t you think? Here it is played by Murray Perahia.

12) Of course it is not surprising that it is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach which pianists have plundered most. However necessary and important it is that we seek out aesthetically-correct and historically-informed performances, however fascinating and beautiful those performances might be, how could we live without Bach on the piano? To my mind it would be a needless form of asceticism to deny oneself such riches. I have been listening to a lot of the wonderful French pianist Marcelle Meyer lately – she recorded a great deal of Rameau, Couperin, Scarlatti and Bach. Here to end with is her heavenly playing of Bach’s Caprice from the Partita No.2.

Of course, piano and chamber music has also been transcribed for full orchestra. Personally, I find these less enjoyable than piano transcriptions – but they are at least as interesting in casting new light on familiar works.

1) The conductor Stokowski made a great many orchestral transcriptions of which those of Bach are best-known no doubt. Here is his version of the Prelude in b minor, from Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier, as conducted recently by Matthias Bamert The sound of the strings is rather glossy – I think I’d prefer to hear a string quartet play it.

2) Joachim Raff made a stirring arrangement of the great Chaconne in d minor from Bach’s second Partita for violin. It is unabashedly in Romantic mode, sounding for all the world like the finale of a great mid-nineteenth century symphony.

3) Webern transforms the Ricercare from The Musical Offering by Bach into something modern and, well, Webernesque. Fragments of melody are assigned to different instruments without breaking the line. The effect is wonderful and shimmering, creating a new layer of counterpoint – a kind of rhythmic colour – to the work.

4) Mahler made a most effective enlargement of Schubert’s String Quartet in d minor D810, Death and the Maiden. From it here is the slow movement Andante.

5) The philosopher Adorno was also a composer who made some strikingly playful and colourful transcriptions of some of Schumann’s piano pieces from his Album for the Young. This is Winterzeit II.

6) Liszt was, of course, the arch-transcriber of other men’s music for the piano. So it is only fair that some of his piano music should be transcribed for orchestra. I don’t know who made this orchestral version of the popular Hungarian Rhapsody No.2. In certain circles Liszt has the reputation, still, of being a meretricious and showy composer, all flash and no substance. This transcription rather adds to that reputation, I’m afraid. I suppose it’s quite good fun, though.

7) I discovered this rather Wagnerian-sounding orchestration of Grieg’s Notturno Op.54 No.4 on a collection of old recordings made by the conductor Golovanov.

8) Schoenberg transcribed Brahms’s Piano Quartet in g minor Op.24 for large orchestra. It’s curious but to my ears it doesn’t sound much like the orchestral works that Brahms himself composed – it certainly sounds more classical and old-fashioned than the symphonies I think.

9) I just adore Vasily Rogal-Levitsky’s delicate transcription of Scriabin’s tiny Prelude in A flat Op.11 No.17.

10) We started with Stokowski so let’s end with him. Here he is himself conducting his own extravagant orchestration of Rachmaninov’s Prelude in c sharp minor Op.2 No.3.

How did people get to hear the great symphonic works of the past when there were fewer concerts and access to those concerts was much more difficult, when there were no recordings and no radio? They relied, of course, on the piano transcription. There was a roaring trade in the nineteenth-century for music that had been re-written to be performed at home on the piano (by one person or two) by amateurs and professionals alike. Nowadays some are inclined to be rather sniffy about the whole thing as once a necessary evil but now irrelevant. I disagree. Transcription in general was always an important part of musical life. Playing transcribed works on the piano is still an unbeatable form of education. And it is fun. They are essential to the piano literature. Furthermore, the best throw new light on familiar works. Which is undoubtedly why they continue to be written even up to the present. So I make no apology for being interested in piano transcriptions. Here are a few notable examples – all taken from complete versions of symphonic works.

1) Vivaldi’s Four Seasons are such a hackneyed work that it is utterly refreshing to come across them in such a strange form. Here is the first movement, Allegro, of Spring arranged for 2 pianos.

2) Many versions were made of Beethoven’s Symphonies. The most famous were those of Liszt for piano solo. This is his version of the finale, Allegro ma non troppo, of the Fourth Symphony.

3) There is something orchestral about much of Brahms’s piano writing so the transcriptions of his Symphonies sound quite natural. Here is the first movement, Allegro non assai, of his Fourth Symphony for piano four-hands.

4) Walter Niemann made a formidable transcription for solo piano of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony. From it, the Scherzo a stirring tour-de-force.

5) Smetana’s tone-poem, Vltava, from the cycle Ma Vlast, is rather more limpid in this transcription for piano four-hands.

6) Fauré’s Requiem would seem a most unlikely candidate for transcription. Yet that made by Emile Naumoff for solo piano is surely beautiful and meditative. From it, the Kyrie.

7) Bruckner’s Third Symphony in the transcription made by fellow composer Mahler is revealed in all its architectural austerity. Here is the long slow movement, Adagio.

8) Here is Dukas’s sprightly and colourful Sorcerer’s Apprentice turned into a virtuoso show-piece for two pianos by Paul Rabinowitch.

9) Debussy’s Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune occupies the same sound-world as his Preludes for piano in this transcription.

10) Nearly all of Scriabin’s compositions were for piano so it is no surprise that transcriptions of his symphonic pieces work. They are different, for sure, but still interesting. Here is the ecstatic finale, entitled Jeu Divin, of his Third Symphony transcribed for two pianos.

Many of the great composers were also great virtuosos of the piano. And even those who weren’t were generally fine pianists. The piano itself has been an essential aid to composition. Well, I thought it would be fun to compile a selection of piano music written by composers not generally associated with the instrument: either they wrote very little for the piano or their piano music is overshadowed by compositions for other forces.

1) Rossini has always been famous for his operas. However, he retired from the stage after the production of William Tell in 1829. He did continue to compose over the next forty years and collected a number of instrumental pieces and songs in a large set entitled Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age). Here, from Volume V, is the lively piano piece Un sauté.

2) Bizet is known now for a handful of works – Carmen, L’Arlésienne and so on. His piano music is much less familiar to most people apart from the duets of Jeux d’enfants. Which is a shame because some of it is very interesting; his Variations chromatiques in particular.

3) Wagner was not a talented pianist although he used the piano extensively in composing his music-dramas. His compositions for piano were occasional pieces, potboilers really. The best is surely the Sonata in A flat that he wrote for the album of Mathilde Wesendonck.

4) Puccini’s scant piano music is virtually unknown. This is a short and slight Foglia d’album.

5) Rimsky-Korsakov’s few piano compositions were not his best, although his Piano Concerto is a fine work. Nevertheless they are typical of the Romantic Russian style. Here is a Romanza in a flat Op.15 No.2.

6) Bruckner spent most of his time on his massive symphonies. And he was, I believe, more interested in the organ than in the piano. There are some early student works and some dances. The only piano piece, though, which is at all notable is the reflective Erinnerung.

7) Verdi was certainly not interested in writing piano music. This little Romanza is the only piece I know of – and it is very slight.

8) Elgar was more of a violinist than a pianist. He did write a number of pieces for the instrument – although they are, perhaps, not as original as the larger-scale choral, orchestral and chamber works. The best-known is probably the atmospheric In Smyrna.

9) Sibelius’s reputation rests on his symphonies and other orchestral works. He did, in fact, write a great deal of music for the piano even though he supposedly disliked the instrument. Many have followed his own dismissive attitude towards these piano pieces as mere hack-work for publishers. That’s rather unfair – there is much to relish and appreciate. Take this lovely, wistful waltz, for instance… Five Piano Pieces Op.75 – The Spruce.

10) Holst write little for the piano – his own career as a pianist being halted by nerve damage as a teenager. Still, his best-loved work, The Planets, was originally scored for piano duet. Despite the colourful originality of the orchestration I must confess to having a soft spot for the piano version which I think really brings out the modernity of the piece and its harmonic innovations – it makes Holst stand out more as a contemporary of Scriabin and Ravel and less as an English pastoralist. Here is Venus: The Bringer of Peace for piano duet.

Beethoven composed his Sonata quasi una fantasia Op.27 No.2 in 1801. It became, almost immediately, one of the most famous piano pieces ever written. Or, at any rate, its first movement became popular. Not long after Beethoven’s death it was christened the Moonlight Sonata by the critic Rellstab. I’m no fan of nicknames for pieces of music – they always seem irrelevant and often absurd. And so here – that first movement, surely, has more, following Berlioz, the character of a lament than a romantic reverie. Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to compare a few different versions. People often have the curious notion that because classical music is written-down all that is necessary is to play the notes. Hardly. Here we have a piece that is relatively simple and that sustains a single mood throughout – yet how varied are the ways in which the music is brought to life. Of course, I must mention that this is only the first movement – one cannot truly judge the interpretation without considering its relation to the rest of the sonata.

1) Harold Bauer records in his autobiography how he came across a score in the New York Public Library and recalled taking particular note that the first movement was marked 2/2. Although the first page of the original manuscript has disappeared the earliest editors did indeed mark the movement 2/2. Bülow, I believe, was the first editor to mark it 4/4 which accords to the way the piece is notated. Anyway, Bauer tried out the music at two beats in the bar and found, he says, that he played faster but that the rhythmic effect was slower. Well, his recording, made in the late 1920s, is certainly rather swift-sounding but not at all hurried. He breaks many of the left-hand octaves and doesn’t play all melodic notes on the beat. Nevertheless, Bauer conveys melancholy without lapsing into sentimentality.

Bauer

2) Josef Hofmann plays the movement with great spontaneity. There are many fluctuations of tempo. This rubato is too much for modern tastes, apparently. But this is surely exquisite playing, is it not? There is delicacy and subtlety of tone as always with Hofmann, and an interpretation that is both mysterious and dramatic.

Hofmann

3) Solomon plays very, very slow. It’s magical and dreamy, though. Every single note is given due weight. I love Solomon’s Beethoven recordings – what a shame his tragic stroke forced abandonment of the complete set.

Solomon

4) Emil Gilels gives a most beautiful performance. Everything is “just right” – possessing an ideal clarity and yet poetic at the same time. Perhaps it is the best recorded version of the work and the one I’d recommend anyone buy.

Gilels

5) Glenn Gould’s is undoubtedly the strangest and most controversial recording. Is it a deconstruction, sweeping away the cobwebs and shedding new light on a too-familiar piece? Or is it some kind of joke – taking revenge on an old, over-played warhorse? He plays the first movement very fast and too loud for introspection. The triplets seem to be tossed off in perfunctory fashion, almost impatiently. I want to like it but I can’t help finding it all surface and no depth.

Gould

6) Finally, let us hear the work on a period instrument. I was always curious: Beethoven marked the first movement to be played senza sordini, ie with the pedal down throughout. This is impossible with a modern piano – the effect would be far too clangorous. I have two versions: one is played by Paul Badura-Skoda. It is a rather awkward performance which seems to be hampered by an instrument with a very resonant bass and shaky treble. The other, by Ronald Brautigam on an instrument that is much less of an historical curiosity is more successful in my opinion. It is a well-judged performance that gives a good idea of the sound-world that Beethoven in all likelihood wanted to create.

Brautigam

Some time ago Becky kindly recommended a post of mine on her blog. One of her readers followed the link here and obviously didn’t like what she saw (on my last.fm charts which I used to display) as she felt compelled for some reason to leave a sneering comment on Beckysweb along the lines of “Ewww, she listens to Ashford & Simpson…” While I was irked at the time – I mean, who wants a stranger laughing in public at our lamentably poor taste in music? – that wasn’t the chief cause of my irritation. No, what puzzled me most, and still does, was the implication that Ashford & Simpson are naff! I’ve never heard such a thing before. Perhaps, as someone said, she had been irritated by one too many renditions of Solid at wedding receptions? The truth is that Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson are quite rightly held in the highest esteem in the world of Motown, soul and disco as performers, writers and producers – as I shall prove to you with this compilation of favourite tracks.

1) One of their earliest hits was a song written for Fifth Dimension called California Soul. Probably better-known now is this version made shortly after by Marlena Shaw.

2) When Ashford & Simpson joined Motown they wrote and produced most of the tracks made by, among many others, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell who, of course, recorded their own version of California Soul. Gaye and Terrell also sang the first of several wonderful versions of Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, here in a remix done, I believe, by Simpson’s brother, Jimmy.

3) In 1971 Valerie Simpson made a solo album for Motown called Exposed. From it this is the soulful and punchy song I Just Wanna Be There.

4) Another group the pair worked with a lot at Motown was Gladys Knight and the Pips. Here, with the catchiest hook, is the Ashford & Simpson-penned Taste of Bitter Love.

5) They wrote many songs for Diana Ross including Remember Me, Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hands), all bar one of the songs on the album, Surrender, and perhaps best of all they wrote and produced The Boss (easily her best album after Diana). And that’s not to forget her glorious version of Ain’t No Mountain High Enough. Anyway, my favourite track off The Boss is No One Gets The Prize – here in the re-edited remix by Jimmy Simpson which draws the track out to a heavenly nine minutes.

6) An instrumental track called Bourgie Bourgie had been created for their 1977 album Send It. Gladys Knight & The Pips did a version with vocals which was then taken up by the John Davis Monster Orchestra with the involvement of Ashford & Simpson to make a version that is both beefier and glossier than the original.

7) Flashback was one of the stronger songs from the album Is It Still Good To Ya. Here is an extended remix of this tuneful and rather ecstatic track.

8) The title track of the 1979 album Stay Free is just classic, pure, joyous disco with soaring strings and gospelly, positive vocals. I love it!

9) While Ashford & Simpson were making all these albums in their own name they continued to work with an incredible number of other artists in all kinds of capacity. To mention just one they were involved with: Chaka Khan’s I’m Every Woman (Nickolas Simpson it was, surprisingly enough, who wrote the words). Here is a great extended remix of the song with Chicago House drum and bass and 70s disco strings that goes on forever.

10) And they are still active today. Amy Winehouse’s album Back to Black contains a new and delightful Ashford & Simpson song, gorgeously orchestrated (it is, of course, the backing from Ain’t No Mountain High Enough), Tears Dry On Their Own, which strangely makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

First posted in August 2007

To continue the brief survey of piano music by female composers.

1) Mel Bonis (1858-1937) was a French composer who wrote music of disarming simplicity. Her piano work La cathédrale blésée – a passacaglia, was one of her more complex and interesting pieces.

2) Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) – another French composer. She mixed in the avant-garde art circles of Montparnasse and Montmartre and was one of the group of composers (along with Auric, Durey, Honegger, Milhaud and Poulenc) christened Les Six by Cocteau. She continued composing for the rest of a long life as a fascinating youth dwindled into obscurity. This is the final movement, Allegramente, of her last piano work, the Partita – playful, piquant and pleasant.

3) Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) was also French, the younger sister of the great teacher Nadia Boulanger. She was an extremely talented woman who wrote olourful and original music. Unfortunately she was ill much of her life and died tragically young. This is the second of her Trois Morceaux, the impressionistic D’un jardin clair.

4) Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) was an American composer whose early works were influenced by Scriabin and Schoenberg. Later she turned to folk music for inspiration and became actively interested in the preservation of US musical traditions. She was the mother of Peggy Seeger and stepmother to folksinger Pete. There is an interesting short biography on Peggy Seeger’s site.

Here is one of her early modernistic pieces for piano, Kaleidoscopic Changes on an Original Theme Ending with a Fugue.

5) Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté (1901-1974) was a Russian-born composer and pianist/violinist and teacher. Her complex music is perhaps rather reminiscent of Busoni – similar Bachian inflections and counterpoint, similar delight in nineteenth-century style virtuosity, similar modern eclecticism.

This is the final movement of her Sonata No.5.

6) There is a good informative page on the Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969) at the Polish Music Center. Although primarily a violinist she wrote quite a bit of vigorous and colourful piano music, too.

This is one of her Concert Studies.

7) Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) was a Russian composer, a pupil of Shostakovich and highly praised by him. Her highly original and uncompromising compositions were rarely performed during the Soviet era – she was censured by the authorities for her “obstinacy”. Ustolvskaya’s concentrated and intense music is characterised particularly by the use of clusters and blocks of sound and determined rhythms.

Here is the rather violent Sonata No.6.

8) The music of the Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina (born 1931) is similarly uncompromising and unusual. Her sound-world, though, is coloured by a strong religious belief and a very personal vision.

This splendidly gothic Chaconne for piano is an early work.

9) I am a great admirer of the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (born 1952). She studied at IRCAM and much of her work is electroacoustic and often of great, even ravishing beauty. I recommend the curious to Jardins secrets. She was associated with the Spectralists in Paris and shares a strong interest in harmony, colour and texture.

Monkey Fingers, Velvet Hand is, so far as I know, her only piano piece and perhaps not entirely typical of her oeuvre.

10) Judith Weir (born 1954) is a British composer who writes for theatre and opera in particular. This piano piece, An Mein Klavier, (whose title obviously refers to the Schubert song) is one of only a couple she has written for the instrument but is nevertheless typical of her dramatic, accessible but modern style.

First posted in December 2007