Steps (piano cycle series) is a set of large-scale piano works written by British composer Peter Seabourne (b.1960), currently standing at 11 volumes (220 pieces) of approximately 9 hours total duration. Each cycle is based around a theme and comprises a sequence of often poetically entitled movements.
The first volume (2001-4) marked the composer's return to composition after a 12-year silence. [5] Originally simply a series of standalone pieces, it was only subsequently gathered into an anthology. However, from the second volume onwards the works are conceived as integrated single spans in the manner of Janacek's On an Overgrown Path, or Schumann's Carnaval.
The Italian CD label Sheva has recorded volumes 1–5, and vol. 8 with pianists Minjeong Shin, Giovanni Santini, Michael Bell, Fabio Menchetti, and Alessandro Viale. [6] Volume 6 was released in May 2022 by Konstantin Lifschitz on Willowhayne Records.. The CDs have been reviewed in Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, Musical Opinion, International Piano, Piano News, Hudební rozhledy and many other magazines. Numerous live performances have taken place in Europe, Armenia, The United States of America and Japan, including by Alessandro Viale, Fabio Menchetti, Konstantin Lifschitz, Minjeong Shin, Michael Bell, Bethel Balge, Giuseppe Modugno, Haruko Seki, Chantal Balestri, Simone Rugani, Andrea Emanuele, Ettore Strangio, Giordano De Nisi, Emanuele Stracchi, Paolo Rinaldi, Barbara Panzarella, Giulia Grassi, Francesca Fierro, Isabella Gori, Letitia Amodio, Francesca Lauri, Sarah Vella, Daphne Delicata, Alvaro Siculiana, Julian Chan, Tsovinar Suflyan and Mikhail Shilyaev.
The composer's musical language is loosely tonal but is often stretched to include elements of polytonality, modality and free atonality. In Musical Opinion, Richard Whitehouse wrote of "a demonstrably Romantic rhetoric with an always audible and yet never facile approach to tonality". [7] A striking feature throughout is the use of rhythm, described by one reviewer as "amazingly inventive" [of Volume 2]. [8] This involves a widespread, subtle stretching of both individual beats and metre giving the music a feeling of flux and ongoing rubato.
Volume 1: An anthology for piano (2001-4):
Volume 2: Studies of Invention (2007):
Volume 3: Arabesques (2012):
Volume 4: Libro di Canti Italiano (2011)
Volume 5: Sixteen Scenes Before a Crucifixion (2014)
Volume 6: Toccatas and Fantasias (2017)
Volume 7: Dances on the Head of a Pin (2019)
Volume 8: My Song in October (2021)
Volume 9: Les Fleurs de la Maladie (2021)
Volume 10: In a Grain of Sand (2023)
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Volume 11: The Curious Diary of Mr Doyle (2024)
Toccata is a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or plucked string instrument featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers. Less frequently, the name is applied to works for multiple instruments.
Jill Crossland is an English pianist, born in Yorkshire. She studied with Ryszard Bakst at Chetham's School of Music and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and with Paul Badura-Skoda in Vienna. She has a preference for Baroque and Classical periods of the repertoire, with a focus on the music by Johann Sebastian Bach, playing it on the piano. She has performed his Well-Tempered Clavier from memory since her student years.
Johann Jakob Froberger was a German Baroque composer, keyboard virtuoso, and organist. Among the most famous composers of the era, he was influential in developing the musical form of the suite of dances in his keyboard works. His harpsichord pieces are highly idiomatic and programmatic.
William Alwyn, was an English composer, conductor, and music teacher.
Julian Anderson is a British composer and teacher of composition.
Gaspar Cassadó i Moreu was a Spanish cellist and composer of the early 20th century.
Arnold Atkinson Cooke was a British composer, a pupil of Paul Hindemith. He wrote a considerable amount of chamber music, including five string quartets and many instrumental sonatas, much of which is only now becoming accessible through modern recordings. Cooke also composed two operas, six symphonies and several concertos.
Robin Greville Holloway is an English composer, academic and writer.
The Bachianas Brasileiras are a series of nine suites by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, written for various combinations of instruments and voices between 1930 and 1945. They represent a fusion of Brazilian folk and popular music on the one hand and the style of Johann Sebastian Bach on the other, as an attempt to freely adapt a number of Baroque harmonic and contrapuntal procedures to Brazilian music. Most of the movements in each suite have two titles: one "Bachian", the other Brazilian.
Phillip Ramey is an American composer, pianist, and writer on music.
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Arkady Luxemburg is a Moldovan-American composer.
Olli Mustonen is a Finnish pianist, conductor, and composer.
Ferruccio Busoni discography is a list of recordings of music composed or adapted by Ferruccio Busoni. For recordings of music with Busoni as pianist, see Ferruccio Busoni discography.
The Bach-Busoni Editions are a series of publications by the Italian pianist-composer Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) containing primarily piano transcriptions of keyboard music by Johann Sebastian Bach. They also include performance suggestions, practice exercises, musical analysis, an essay on the art of transcribing Bach's organ music for piano, an analysis of the fugue from Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' sonata, and other related material. The later editions also include free adaptations and original compositions by Busoni which are based on the music of Bach.
Kenneth Leighton was a British composer and pianist. His compositions include church and choral music, pieces for piano, organ, cello, oboe and other instruments, chamber music, concertos, symphonies, and an opera. He had various academic appointments in the Universities of Leeds, Oxford and, primarily, Edinburgh.
Peter Seabourne is an English contemporary classical composer based in Lincolnshire, England.
Konstantin Yakovlevich Lifschitz is a Russian pianist of Jewish descent.
The Sei pezzi per pianoforte, P 044, is a set of six solo piano pieces written by the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi between 1903 and 1905. These predominantly salonesque pieces are eclectic, drawing influence from different musical styles and composers. The pieces have various musical forms and were composed separately and later published together between 1905 and 1907 in a set under the same title for editorial reasons; Respighi had not conceived them as a suite, and therefore did not intend to have uniformity among the pieces. The set, under Bongiovanni, became his first published work. Five of the six pieces are derived from earlier works by Respighi, and only one of them, the "Canone", has an extant manuscript.