(++++) NORTHERN LIGHTS

Hugo Alfvén: Festspel; Gustav II Adolf—Suite for Orchestra; Einojuhani Rautavaara: Cantus arcticus. Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Neeme Järvi. Chandos. $21.99 (SACD). 

     Take a step beyond Sibelius, Nielsen and Grieg and you encounter a host of Scandinavian composers whose comparative neglect is exceedingly difficult to fathom. From Franz Berwald, Niels Gade and Wilhelm Stenhammar to the late Per Nørgård, composers of intelligence, sensitivity and emotional depth continue to be heard far less often than is warranted based on the quality of their music. That makes the occasional forays into their works in recorded form all the more welcome, especially when they are advocated by performers as accomplished and engaged as the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Neeme Järvi – and even more so when recordings offer sound quality as fine as that on a new Chandos SACD focusing on Hugo Alfvén and Einojuhani Rautavaara. 

     On the face of it, this is a curious combination of music, made even more so by the disc’s sequence, which places a Rautavaara work between two by Alfvén. Furthermore, these are very different composers, from different countries and time periods: Alfvén (1872-1960) was Swedish, Rautavaara (1928-2016) Finnish. And the music here is more notable for its points of difference than for any elements of similarity. Nevertheless, what comes across most clearly in this recording is just how worthwhile the works are and how mystifying it is that music of this quality is not heard more often outside Scandinavia itself – and, in truth, not all that frequently there, either. 

     Both Alfvén and Rautavaara lived most of their lives in the 20^th century, and all three works on this disc are 20^th-century ones, but these composers absorbed and engaged in the time period very differently. Alfvén was largely Romantic or neo-Romantic in approach, his two works played here resting comfortably in an essentially tonal environment and encompassing a thoroughly appropriate set of emotions and orchestral displays – indeed, Alfvén’s handling of large orchestral forces is exemplary throughout his music. Festspel (“Festival Play”), written in 1907, sounds like a proclamatory overture, and in that sense fulfills its mission admirably: it was produced to celebrate a newly opened building for the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. Filled with brass and including a deftly scored polonaise, Festspel mixes celebratory elements with lyrical ones to fine effect, and would not be out of place introducing a suitably dramatic stage work. Gustav II Adolf actually is a stage work, for which Alfvén wrote incidental music in 1932. The eight-movement suite from what is essentially a history play is colorful, varied and very adeptly scored. The play’s focus is the Thirty Years War, near the end of which, in 1632, Sweden’s much-admired king died in battle at the age of 37. Alfvén’s music ranges from the prayerful to the deeply emotional to the martial, encompassing portraits not only of Sweden’s monarch but also of his main enemy. Alfvén shows himself a master of old forms, including the sarabande and minuet, as well as a clever interpreter of such dances: he includes a delightfully light bourrée for three bassoons. The battle scene that ends the suite and is its longest movement builds effectively throughout, and the overall impression of the music is one of drama, intensity, and sensitivity to multiple moods and forms of expression. 

     The expressiveness of Rautavaara is of another sort and on another level altogether. Although he was never a dedicated follower of avant-garde musical trends, Rautavaara incorporated far more unusual approaches into his music than Alfvén brought into his. Rautavaara’s Cantus arcticus (1972) is designated “Concerto for Birds and Orchestra” and was written for a university graduation ceremony – a “stage” rather different from those for which the two Alfvén pieces heard here were produced. Rautavaara’s “birds” title is quite literal and shows his willingness to think of music in ways beyond the typical: the concerto incorporates two-channel recordings of birdsong in all three movements, and the orchestral elements – although generally tonal – highlight the birdsong and are built around it. Rautavaara was quite specific about the pacing of this work: he gives note-value indications for every section of every movement. And he offered clear auditory guidance for the first movement: “Think of autumn and of Tchaikovsky.” None of these touches forecloses interpretative niceties, however, and Järvi and the orchestra are as attuned to the flow of Rautavaara’s music as they are to the pacing and balance of Alfvén’s. The Rautavaara work includes tapes of wild cranes in the first movement, larks in the second, and swans in the third – this last mildly reminiscent of Sibelius, for whom a flight of swans provided inspiration for the finale of his Symphony No. 5. Rautavaara incorporates the recorded birdsong systematically and cleverly into the orchestral texture of all three movements, bringing it in softly and gradually in the first movement before making it increasingly prominent, using it to open the second and third movements, and eventually melding it with complex orchestral textures as the concerto develops toward its conclusion. Rautavaara’s handling of the orchestra is quite different from Alfvén’s, less sumptuous and more transparent, showing just how differently these two composers conceived compositions for a full-scale ensemble. Järvi’s understanding of all the music on this disc is thorough, the pacing and the orchestral balance are idiomatic and well-executed, and even though these particular pieces fit together rather oddly when heard in juxtaposition, they demonstrate conclusively that both Alfvén and Rautavaara are composers with a great deal to communicate and a great deal of skill in putting their musical ideas across. Both deserve to be heard with considerably greater frequency, especially in performances as full of skill and thoughtfulness as these.

(+++) THE MEANDERING PIANO

Michael Stephen Brown: Chamber Music. Michael Stephen Brown, piano; SPA Trio (Susanna Phillips, soprano; Paul Neubauer, viola; Anne-Marie McDermott, piano); Osmo Vänskä, clarinet and Erin Keefe, violin; Jerome Lowenthal and Ursula Oppens, piano and narration. First Hand Records. $22.99. 

Eric Moe: Alternating Currents; Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust; Scree Slope; Now This; Rowdy Sarabande; WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN 5 YEARS. Eric Moe, piano and digital piano; Solungga Liu, piano; New York Music Ensemble conducted by Eduardo Leandro. New Focus Recordings. $18.99. 

     The expressive capabilities of the piano continue to make it an instrument of choice for contemporary composers. To be sure, modern piano compositions and presentations sometimes include extended techniques, “prepared” pianos, digital instruments and other variations on what is usually thought of as pianistic. But the willingness of some composers to present their own keyboard works remains unchanged: the tradition of the pianist/composer is a longstanding one, which Michael Stephen Brown (born 1987) and Eric Moe (born 1954) both continue. 

     A new First Hand Records recording of Brown’s chamber music showcases the composer’s performances of Four Lakes for Children (2024), Breakup Etude for the Right Hand Alone (2020), and Pour Angeline (2024), plus his accompaniment of soprano Susanna Phillips in Love’s Lives Lost (2023). All these works have personal meaning and resonance for Brown, but listeners will understandably be primarily interested in the extent to which the music communicates to them and their own lives and experiences. Thus, the “four lakes” reference is to lakes at the site of the Yaddo artists’ retreat in Saratoga Springs, New York, which are named for children who died before age 10; but for listeners, the straightforward simplicity of the music – intended to be playable by young pianists – will be the clearest element. Breakup Etude reflects the end of one of Brown’s relationships and his temporary loss of left-hand function, but its quicksilver mood changes and virtuosic single-hand requirements are its most notable elements. It contrasts strongly with the lyricism of Pour Angeline, whose title refers to Brown’s fiancée; here the quiet delicacy (inspired by Chopin) is noteworthy, although the work is rather cloying. The love-focused but very different inspiration for Brown’s setting of eight poems by Evan Shinners is another composer: Schumann, specifically his setting of Adelbert von Chamisso’s Frauen-Liebe und Leben. Shinners’ poems, unlike Chamisso’s, are not about a woman’s love and life (one Shinners poem is actually called “Parody of Chamisso”) but focus on former lovers re-encountering each other after being separated for years. The piano part reflects the varied moods of the poems to a greater extent than do the vocal settings, which are on the formulaic side. The intent is clearly to present the varying moods of what-might-have-been compared with what-turned-out-to-be. However, the tender material relating to the forgone relationship is less effectively captured than are some rather sarcastic elements, and the inevitable wistful conclusion – the longest song – is rather dour and protests too much in its attempt to present heartfelt emotion: being loud is not equivalent to being convincing. 

     In addition to Brown presenting his own material, other musicians offer three Brown works on this CD. Pas de trois (2025) is a three-movement work performed by the members of SPA Trio, for whom the piece was written. Here the vocal elements are taken from poetry by D.H. Lawrence, Rita Dove, and Brown himself. The material, especially Lawrence’s, is subtler than the texts by Shinners, if not ultimately very communicative beyond personal referents. Brown intends the words and music to reflect the dedicatees – the movements are called “Piano,” “The Violist,” and “Soprano” – but this self-referential (and self-absorbed) approach is less than fully convincing. What works here is the instrumental sensitivity, for instance in the viola pizzicati at the start of the third movement. Relationship (2018) is a five-movement duo for clarinet and viola that was commissioned by Osmo Vänskä and Erin Keefe, who perform it here. More overtly modernistic than most of Brown’s music, the work is interestingly filled with at-times-overdone exclamations and squeaks and plucks and such; its variegated techniques ultimately lead to a bouncy folk-infused and rather undanceable dance movement that, happily, seems not to take itself too seriously. Twelve Blocks for Piano (Four Hands) and Poetry, which dates to 2021, is Brown’s tribute to the two people who perform it here, Jerome Lowenthal and Ursula Oppens. They not only play piano but also recite poetry in French and English – all beneath a title reflecting the distance that Brown walked to see them during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is far too rarefied and specific a set of circumstances to communicate effectively to anyone not already involved in Brown’s intimate life – indeed, the music seems designed mostly as a personal experience for Brown, Lowenthal and Oppens themselves, although some of the non-verbal material is engagingly, even entertainingly pianistic. As a whole, this CD does a good job of being a tribute to various people and factors in Brown’s personal world but is considerably less adept at reaching out beyond him and his close acquaintances. The instrumental pieces, especially Relationship, are on the whole more convincing than the ones including vocal elements. 

     Moe’s pianism is at the service of three of the six works on his New Focus Recordings CD, including the very short (less than one-minute) Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust. The piece, written in 2014, simply repeats five notes, then six and seven, giving a sense of the flow of water. The intent is to reflect slow erosion, but it is not necessary to know that in order to absorb this miniature, since composers have used similar approaches to indicate water flow for hundreds of years. Moe also reflects something akin to erosion with Scree Slope (2019), whose personal element draws on the feeling of stepping up on a hiking trail and then sliding back down – but, again, knowing the underlying reasoning beneath the piece is not necessary to absorb its sense of forward motion that then reverses. In this case, the work continues for almost five minutes, which is longer than necessary to make its point – although it does come to a kind of revelatory conclusion at the end that seems to indicate that the slipping and sliding have been worthwhile. Moe plays digital piano on Rowdy Sarabande, a 2024 work that initially bears a passing resemblance to the Baroque dance but soon descends into intense and rather chaotic sounds made possible by using 19-tone equal temperament for the instrument. This sort of extension of technique and aural quality is typical in avant-garde music and is always an acquired taste – the feeling here, a common one in music of this sort, is that the composer is self-indulgently engaged in intellectual experimentation for which an audience is not, strictly speaking, even necessary. This CD also includes two piano works performed by Solungga Liu. The title Alternating Currents implies something electronic, but this 2020 piece actually is non-electronic and uses a non-modified piano. It basically involves alternating notes played by the pianist’s two hands, with regular rhythms interrupted by occasional interjections that range from single exclamations to trills and other decorations. Now This (2017) could as well, perhaps better, have been called “And now for something completely different,” echoing the Monty Python phrase uttered at an abrupt shift in topic. Moe is doing something akin to what the Monty Python troupe did, but without humor: the work’s title is intended to reflect the two-word phrase used in news reporting when an entirely different story is about to be presented. In practice, this means Moe creates a series of completely disconnected segments of varying mood, technique and sound, then presents them without any discernible effort to provide continuity or any type of connection until, at the end, a few elements return. Knowing the “news” connection certainly helps listeners understand what Moe is doing here, but on a strictly musical basis, it is unnecessary, since it is clear from the piece itself what is happening: disjointed material is presented for a considerable period of time (13 minutes), with a bit of this and that eventually returning. Moe also has a significant real-world connection for the all-capital-letters-titled WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN 5 YEARS: the title of this 2023 work is a typical job-interview cliché question. This is the one piece on the CD for multiple instruments: the New York New Music Ensemble includes flutes (Emi Ferguson), clarinets (Adrián Sandi), violin (Karen Kim), cello (Chris Finckel), and piano (Stephen Gosling). At 16½ minutes, this is the longest work on the 50-minute CD, but is built with the same sense of disconnectedness and rhythmic variation employed in Moe’s shorter pieces. The timbral variation made possible by use of multiple instruments helps keep the music interesting, and the periodic inclusion of taped interview questions (including the one in the work’s title) makes the piece’s intent and non-musical connections explicit. There is a touch of mechanistic rhythm to indicate the machine-like nature of business, and there are some overt if unsurprising instrumental reactions to some questions, such as an intense outburst after being asked whether the person being interviewed handles stress well. All in all, WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN 5 YEARS has numerous clever elements in addition to some unexceptional instrumental writing. Because the music’s inspiration is integrated into the work itself, audiences can respond without having to, in effect, pre-study the piece’s provenance to understand where it is coming from. This is a significant plus and helps make the piece enjoyable to hear once, even if the work goes on somewhat too long and ends (no surprise) ambiguously. Whether listeners will want to replay WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN 5 YEARS is, however, another matter. Indeed, the staying power both of Moe’s disc and of Brown’s is likely to depend on how closely an individual is personally attuned to these composer/performers. Close members of Brown’s inner circle are the only people likely to find that his works resonate with them; Moe casts a somewhat wider net, but in most of his pieces as well, it helps a great deal to know how he thinks and what elements of his music are designed to call up which specific extra-musical events, thoughts and feelings.

(++++) BEING AMERICAN

Samuel Barber: String Quartet No. 1; Wynton Marsalis: At the Octoroon Balls; John Williams: With Malice Toward None; Erich Wolfgang Korngold: String Quartet No. 3. Calidore String Quartet (Jeffrey Myers and Ryan Meehan, violins; Jeremy Berry, viola; Estelle Choi, cello). Signum Classics. $19.99. 

Ken Ueno: Wavelengths; …a.m…; I am the uncle who sees past lives; Phase Patterns of Likeness Slightly Off. New Focus Recordings. $18.99.

     Just what it means to be an American is a topic that has been debated now for 250-plus years; and if the debate seems unusually strident nowadays, that is only because the relatively young nation has a comparatively short memory. In musical circles, the semiquincentennial of the United States happens to coincide with the increasing frequency of idiosyncratic concert and recorded programming, wherein performers mix and match pieces of music based on their own highly personal notions of what gives a presentation coherence and (one hopes) meaning for an audience. When a program is convincingly assembled and well-performed, it can be effective even when, objectively speaking, it is something of a mismatch, whereas when the works do not really relate well to each other, the grouping really reaches out only to listeners who happen to share the performers’ specific notion of appropriateness of the combination. In the case of the new Signum Classics release by the Calidore Quartet, the intriguing combination of string quartets by Barber and Korngold and the excellence of the playing carry the weight of a CD that otherwise does not quite hang together well enough to live up to its title of “American Tapestry.” Still, this is certainly a well-woven and thoughtful program. Samuel Barber’s String Quartet No. 1 is his one completed work in the form: he made only a few sketches for a second. The piece is best-known for Barber’s orchestral arrangement of its middle movement as the very popular Adagio for Strings. Contextualized in its original form and position, the movement proves to be a strong contrast with the other two: the first movement is expansive and much more “modern” in musical language (for the 1930s), while the third is very short and emphatically conclusive. The work as a whole mixes nostalgic, lyrical elements with overtly up-to-date ones for its time period; the extent to which that reflects something particularly “American” is, however, a matter of opinion. In any case, Barber’s quartet complements Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s String Quartet No. 3, a work from the mid-1940s, in interesting ways. Korngold also melds lyrical and strident elements, but his overall language is less tonal, more acerbic, more strongly chromatic than Barber’s – despite Korngold’s use in the third of the work’s four movements of the love theme from one of his film scores, for The Sea Wolf (1941). An attractively variegated work whose individual elements sound largely disconnected from each other, Korngold’s quartet works its way toward an upbeat and tonal conclusion that, thanks to the Calidore Quartet’s attentiveness to the music’s many moods, comes across to very fine effect. The Korngold and Barber quartets, taken together, seem to point to an America that is disjointed, multifaceted and more than a touch uncertain about itself and its place in the world – which, come to think of it, is a pretty good conclusion. The other two pieces on this CD are more overtly illustrative of specifics than are those by Barber and Korngold. The Calidore Quartet plays the three inner movements from Wynton Marsalis’ seven-movement At the Octoroon Balls (whose title refers to Creole social/romantic rituals). Jazz (which is a strongly American form) mixes here with hymnlike and songful material, and there is considerable well-conceived scene-painting throughout – notably in Hellbound Highball, a movement depicting a Hades-bound train whose intermittent stops and starts require intricate collaborative playing that the performers manage with apparent ease. The Marsalis material is fascinating on its own – the complete suite would likely be even more so – but its particular form of impressionistic writing does not fit especially well with the works by Barber and Korngold. Finally – although not placed last on the CD, which would have been a better decision – the Calidore Quartet offers the short, warm and heartfelt With Malice Toward None by John Williams. This is the Lincoln theme that Williams wrote for Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film about one of the few figures in American history whose positive reputation seems immune to rethinking and reconsideration. Placing this piece at the disc’s end would have given the whole CD an ultimately more-hopeful feeling than it receives by having the Korngold quartet as its final piece, but perhaps that is part of the point the Calidore Quartet wants to make here: that America does possess warmth and goodness (which it all too often martyrs), but that the meaning and meaningfulness of the nation are far from sunnily optimistic. Ultimately, what works and does not work for individual listeners in this compilation will be a matter of personal taste, but for any audience, the highly impressive individual and ensemble playing of the performers will stand out and will invite contemplation of the extent to which the works chosen for this disc do or do not encapsulate the American experience. 

     American musical life in the 21^st century is no less variegated than that of the 20^th, when all the works performed by the Calidore Quartet except the one by Williams were written. But contemporary American composers such as Ken Ueno (born 1970) very often create music using techniques that distance themselves from any specific geographical location and focus on sound production that is as universal as it is off-putting to those more interested in traditional forms and/or instruments. A (+++) New Focus Recordings CD of four Ueno works, performed by the composer and members of a group called The Up:Strike (sic) Project, treads the boundary between music and noise in a way that will be familiar to anyone acquainted with today’s compositional techniques and the instrumentation used to bring conceptualizations into auditory reality. Wavelengths (2019) is for a solo vibraphone on which speakers have been placed to emit sine tones that expand the notes being played. It is one of those extension-of-technique works that so many modern composers favor in looking for ways to expand instrumental capabilities beyond those normally heard. It is followed on the CD by …a.m… (sic, period and ellipses included), a 2002 piece for percussion quartet that opens with white noise (a sound often heard in avant-garde material), moves into individual instrumental strikes, then eventually leads to cacophony until it ends with the sounds of tuned metal pipes. I am the uncle who sees past lives (2024) uses Ueno’s own vocals – extended, amplified and otherwise pulled and pushed beyond what the human “throat instrument” can produce on its own – along with electronics that produce the vague feeling of a forest or jungle setting. And Phase Patterns of Likeness Slightly Off, a 2023 work that is another percussion-quartet piece, intermingles four vibraphones in wholly nonthematic material that swells and subsides, joins and separates in ways that intermittently unite the performers and maintain them in thoroughly disconnected trajectories. All four of these works are quite extended as sound-pattern-based pieces go – ranging in length from more than 12 minutes to more than 20 – and all are aurally immersive for listeners inclined to desire the sound worlds that Ueno creates and explores. This Ueno-focused recording is emphatically not a CD for a general audience, but it is every bit as American in its way and its orientation as is the disc in which the Calidore Quartet uses its acoustic instruments to bring forth the sonic environments created and explored by Barber, Korngold, Marsalis and Williams.

(++++) COMBINED CELEBRATIONS

Idil Biret: Schwetzingen Festival 14/15 May 1999. IBA. $42.99 (4 CDs). 

     As celebratory Idil Biret releases go, this one has special provenance. Naxos’ extensive and long-running Idil Biret Archives recordings include a series of earlier performances by the Turkish pianist, a series focused on Beethoven, a group offering concertos, a solo-focused sequence, and various one-off boxed sets. This four-CD recording fits into that last category and is also a single-composer-focused release, being a celebration of Frédéric Chopin on the 150^th anniversary of his death – an occasion for which Biret performed not one but two entire Chopin programs at the Schwetzingen Festival in Germany. 

     The nature of these performances makes this a celebration as much of Biret herself as of Chopin. The first night’s works were scheduled to be played by Anatol Ugorski (1942-2023), but the Russian-born German pianist withdrew at the very last minute, and the festival organizers asked if perhaps Biret could play something suitable on May 14, 1999, in addition to what she was already scheduled to perform on May 15. Biret more than rose to the challenge: she played the exact program that Ugorski was supposed to offer, then went on the next night to do hers as originally planned. It is those two nights of Chopin performances that are offered to listeners here. 

     In 1999, Biret (born 1941) was scarcely inexperienced with Chopin: she had been the first pianist ever to record the composer’s complete works for solo piano and for piano with orchestra. Nevertheless, presenting two two-hour all-Chopin recitals on two consecutive nights was a substantial achievement by any measure. And this release shows just how well Biret handled the challenge. 

     Being above all a thoughtful performer, Biret always brought a personal quality to Chopin’s music, never allowing it to wallow in emotion or become merely maudlin. This is immediately apparent in the first half of the May 14 recital, which includes 12 Mazurkas and the Polonaise-Fantaisie. The three comparatively straightforward groups of Mazurkas, Opp. 17, 30 and 33, are often neatly individuated by Biret, who pays close attention to the works’ rhythms as well as Chopin’s use of repetition as a primary building block. The Polonaise-Fantaisie then takes listeners in a very different direction, with Biret on the one hand clarifying the polonaise-derived meter and rhythm while, on the other, focusing on the fantasia elements that give the work its overall character and primary impact. She is especially attentive, to very fine effect, to the work’s central, lyrical section. The second half of the May 14 program is wholly devoted to Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 58, plus three encores. All three Chopin piano sonatas are in minor keys – No. 1 in C minor, No. 2 in B-flat minor, and No. 3 in B minor. And his other sonata, for cello and piano, is in G minor. This consistent choice of minor tonalities for sonatas indicates something about the commonality of the works’ emotional canvases, and Biret is clearly aware of this – and of the fact that the two middle movements in this four-movement work, which are in major keys, help balance the darker and more emotive first and fourth movements. Biret’s performance is expansive – she tends toward slower tempos in most of the music on this recording, although only rarely does a section drag – and manages to convey the sonata’s emotional heft without losing sight of its elements of quietude and serenity. Her three encores complement the earlier material and are all well-presented: Nocturne, Op. 55, No. 2; Etude, Op. 25, No. 11; and Mazurka, Op. 63, No. 3. 

     Biret’s May 15 recital, the one she was originally scheduled to play at the 1999 Schwetzingen Festival, is a more-varied exploration of the musical forms in which Chopin expressed himself. Here the first part of the program includes Rondo à la mazur, Op. 5; Polonaise, Op. 71, No. 2; Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise; Waltzes, Op. 64, No. 2 and Op. 18; and Tarantella, Op. 43. The second half consists of Mazurkas, Op. 53, No. 3 and Op. 59, Nos. 1-3; Ecossaises, Op. 72; Prelude, Op. 45; and Scherzo, Op. 54. Then there are three encores, and these are particularly interesting. The first is expected in this context: Chopin’s Etude, Op. 25, No. 12. But the second is, surprisingly, the Kreisler/Rachmaninoff Liebesleid, and the third is a work by a composer whose music Biret almost never performed: it is Alkan’s Chemin de fer, which Biret manages with aplomb even though it is a bit outside her comfort zone. This is perhaps the first piece of music based on a train journey, and it is full of scurrying and imitative elements that make for a very impressive pianistic display – and in this case Biret leans wholeheartedly into the sheer virtuosity that Alkan’s piece invites a virtuoso to demonstrate. Hearing this music and the Liebesleid, two works so different from the Chopin material that dominates this recording and that was the reason for being of the 1999 Schwetzingen Festival, gives a fuller picture of Biret’s high level of skill at this point in her career and shows that, her considerable expertise with Chopin aside, she was highly adept at presenting piano works of all sorts at pretty much any time. 

     This IBA release concludes with some bonus material that has nothing to do with the Schwetzingen Festival but that further displays Biret’s approach to Chopin: the Impromptus, Opp. 29, 36, 51 and 66, recorded at a November 1984 concert in Munich. These readings, 15 years earlier than the ones from Schwetzingen, evince the same careful attention to detail, firm grasp of structure, and elegance of technique that Biret displays in the Schwetzingen material and, indeed, puts forth in practically all of the many Idil Biret Archives recordings. For fans of the Turkish pianist, lovers of Chopin, and admirers of sensitive pianism proffered with finely honed technique, this four-CD set offers plenty of enjoyment and much to celebrate.