With 'Early Piano Music', Ketil Bjørnstad's beautiful solo albums 'Preludes' Vols. 1 & 2 and 'Pianology' from the mid-1980s are made available once again. These recordings have been unavailable since the mid-90s, and have been very much in demand.
These three albums are from the middle period of Ketil Bjørnstad's career and were recorded in 1984 and 1987. The music evokes imagery, and like so much of Bjørnstad's music it straddles the border between classical and jazz. All the music on the records has been composed, but there is plenty of space for improvisation.
In the 1970s and 80s cultural polymath Ketil Bjørnstad - he's a novelist and poet as well as a composer, and classical and jazz pianist - enjoyed considerable success with several large-scale, ambitious recording projects for the Norwegian market, including Leve Patagonia, Tidevann and Aniara. His collaboration with Manfred Eicher and ECM, which would bring his music to a huge international audience, did not begin until 1993 with the album Water Stories, to be followed by the celebrated The Sea, The Sea II and many others.
The 24 compositions in total that constitute Preludes 1 & 2 were written by Bjørnstad in 1984. They were first released on two LPs by the Norwegian underground label Uniton, which is most renowned for its releases with Holy Toy, Conrad Schnitzler, Fra Lippo Lippi and Harold Budd. Preludes 1 & 2 were later released as a CD set on Bjørnstad's own label, Hermitage, and the Japanese label September, in 1993. Pianology was first released by the Norwegian label Hete Blikk in 1987, and re-issued on Hermitage and September in 1994.
Personnel: Ketil Bjørnstad (piano)
