Becomings: Piano Music by Sam Hayden
NOTE: CD version to be released officially on February 12, 2021. Pre-release orders accepted now for delivery in late January.Digital albums delivered immediately.
This album features the first ever recordings of Sam Hayden’s complete music for solo piano, performed by contemporary music specialist and indefatigable champion of new music, Ian Pace, a pianist with a formidable reputation for mastering the most challenging of new repertoire. The centrepiece is Hayden’s monumental 7-movement cycle, Becomings (Das Werden) I-VII (2016-18), the most recent work on the album and the most ambitious and demanding in terms of scale and sheer virtuosity. Becomings is accompanied by two shorter acoustic works, …still time… (1990) and Fragment (After Losses) (2003). A different soundworld is provided by Piano Moves (1990) for amplified piano. His solo piano works have in common constant transformation, existing at the extremes of gesture, polyphony, density, register, dynamic range and textual juxtaposition, very much reflecting an aesthetic alignment with modernist traditions and very much at the cutting edge of the avant-garde, while retaining an open and interesting experience for even less adventurous listeners. Hayden has received commissions from many ensembles and the BBC and is Professor of Composition at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.
Ian Pace is a pianist of long-established reputation, specialising in the farthest reaches of musical modernism and transcendental virtuosity, as well as a writer and musicologist focusing on issues of performance, music and society. He has pursued an active international career, performing in 24 countries and at most major European venues and festivals. His vast repertoire, which extends to all periods, focuses particularly upon music of the 20th and 21st centuries. He has given world premieres of over 300 piano works and has recorded 34 albums. He is Head of Music at City University, London.
Early-bird orders made before February 12, 2021 – 15% off normal price.
Track Listing
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Sam Hayden (b.1968):
- Becomings I (4:36)
- Becomings II (9:39)
- Becomings III (6:31)
- Becomings IV (7:32)
- Becomings V (8:54)
- Becomings VI (5:22)
- Becomings VII (3:51)
- Fragment (After Losses) (4:44)
- ...still time... (12:19)
- Piano Moves (25:25)
Reviews
“Hayden has foregone some of the proven avant-garde ways of ensuring a certain visceral accessibility of musical tone. With its obsessive faithfulness to its own particular manners and mechanisms, Becomings seems impelled by a particular paradox, achieving a very intense kind of detachment, which it sustains throughout. So much remains to be learned about what Becomings itself has to say. Fortunately, these remarkable discs make it possible for us to do just that.
” —Arnold Whittall
“Sometimes intricate, frequently oblique, and always provocative music. These are fiercely committed readings, recorded with clarity and presence, making for a release worthy of attention from all adventurous and inquiring listeners for its dedicated and impressive music-making.
” —Richard Whitehouse
“Hayden’s music will appeal to more adventurous listeners… ambitious and demanding.. a comparable stylistic terrain to Ferneyhough.
” —Andy Hamilton
“Hayden’s piano music is formidably complex but Ian Pace proves an exceptional interpreter, clarifying every element of Hayden’s contrasting demands. This is music of fearless intensity performed with exceptional technique and perception from one of Britain’s leading exponents of contemporary piano music.
” —Jonathan Woolf
“One of those happy surprises… the piano music of Sam Hayden, as played extraordinarily well by Ian Pace. the adventuresome sort of High Modernism dash that keeps the listener challenged and well rewarded with exciting fare. Hayden is the genuine article and I hope we can hear more of his music in future releases. Good show!
” —Grego Edwards
