Claude Baker: Piano Concerto 'From Noon to Starry Night'
Marc-André Hamelin (piano)
Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Juanjo Mena, Gilbert Varga
Hamelin brings to light fellow Canadian Claude Baker’s Piano Concerto, a strangely unsatisfying mishmash of styles and quotations. Schubert haunts the rest of the disc. Good performances.
Claude Baker: Piano Concerto 'From Noon to Starry Night'
Marc-André Hamelin (piano)
Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Juanjo Mena, Gilbert Varga
Purchase product
Hamelin brings to light fellow Canadian Claude Baker’s Piano Concerto, a strangely unsatisfying mishmash of styles and quotations. Schubert haunts the rest of the disc. Good performances.
About
Award-winning and much decorated composer Claude Baker here entwines his evocative soundworld with the powerful imagery of two great poets. Recorded in its premiere performance with Marc-André Hamelin as soloist, the Piano Concerto ‘From Noon to Starry Night’ draws on and amplifies the structures and meanings of five poems by Walt Whitman, expressing the heroism and darkness of war, exuberant celebrations of nature and a wistful ‘remembrance of things past.’ Aus Schwanengesang is a memorial piece that expands and ‘re-composes’ the poignant Heine Lieder from Schubert’s song cycle with oblique and multi-layered references.
Contents and tracklist
- Marc-André Hamelin (piano)
- Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra
- Gilbert Varga
- Recorded: 7-8 January 2011
- Recording Venue: Hilbert Circle Theatre, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
- Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra
- Juan José Mena
- Recorded: 9-10 October 2009
- Recording Venue: Hilbert Circle Theatre, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Awards and reviews
Christmas 2017
Hamelin brings to light fellow Canadian Claude Baker’s Piano Concerto, a strangely unsatisfying mishmash of styles and quotations. Schubert haunts the rest of the disc. Good performances.
January 2018
[Baker’s music is] akin to Ruggles in its often dissonant yet never atonal harmony…Performances could hardly be bettered. Marc-Andre Hamelin conjures scintillating pianism, while Gilbert Varga and Juanjo Mena secure committed orchestral playing.
