Performer: Piers Lane
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Hyperion
Catalogue: CDH55454
Release: 2002
Size: 232 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. Byrd: The Carman’s Whistle
02. Dowland: Now, O now, I needs must part
03. Handel: Hornpipe from Watermusic
04. Scott: Handelian Rhapsody
05. Delius: Air and Dance
Stanford: Four Irish Dances
06. I. A March-Jig ‘Maguire’s Kick’
07. II. A Slow Dance
08. III. The Leprechaun’s Dance
09. IV. A Reel
10. anon.: Beautiful Fresh Flower
11. Strauss: Ramble on Love from Der Rosenkavalier
Brahms: Lieder, Op. 49
12. IV. Cradle Song
13. Fauré: Après un rêve, Op. 7 No. 1
14. Fauré: Nell, Op. 18 No. 1
15. Tchaikovsky: Paraphrase on Tchaikovsky’s Flower Waltz
16. Gershwin: The Man I Love
17. Gershwin: Love Walked In
Foster: Tribute to Foster
18. Lullaby
Though he professed not to enjoy concert giving, Grainger was one of the greatest pianists of the earlier twentieth century and had an intimate understanding of the capabilities of the piano and how best to write for it. He possessed a unique compositional voice and was, in many ways, part of the great composer–pianist tradition stretching from Liszt to Busoni for whom the concert transcription was an essential part of their art.
This recording contains the majority of Grainger’s concert transcriptions of music by other composers (his few Bach arrangements are performed by Piers Lane on Bach Piano Transcriptions Volume 3). They range from the folk-inspired Irish Dances of Stanford, full of Grainger’s characteristically extrovert piano writing, to the hyper-romantic lushness and incredible pianistic sophistication of his Ramble on Love based on Richard Strauss’s ‘Rosenkavalier’. All are superbly played by Piers Lane.