Special offer. Roy Agnew: Piano Music
Stephanie McCallum (piano)
This is a superb exploration of rare repertoire, beautifully recorded in the Verbrugghen Hall of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and played with true devotion ensconced within a superior...
Special offer. Roy Agnew: Piano Music
Stephanie McCallum (piano)
Purchase product
This is a superb exploration of rare repertoire, beautifully recorded in the Verbrugghen Hall of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and played with true devotion ensconced within a superior...
About
Roy Agnew (1891–1944) – one of few early-twentieth-century Australian composers to gain international success – wove many external influences into a warmly Romantic personal style of striking variety and wide appeal, and his compositions, largely for the piano, are startlingly virtuosic, harmonically daring and charmingly sentimental by turn. Beautifully written by a natural pianist for his own instrument, they often recall the virtuosic textures of Liszt and Skryabin and occasionally show flashes of the Impressionist colours of Debussy. This is the fifth album that Stephanie McCallum – Associate Professor in piano at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music – has recorded for Toccata Classics. The four earlier ones all focused on French composers: Alkan, Boëly and Ropartz. Now she turns her considerable talents to rescue a forgotten composer from her native Australia.
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
May/June 2020
This is a superb exploration of rare repertoire, beautifully recorded in the Verbrugghen Hall of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and played with true devotion ensconced within a superior technique.
December 2019
This new release charts his piano music as possibly never before. […] McCallum is a vibrant and sensitive exponent of Agnew’s music, never inflating it, but drawing its profile with poetic discretion
December 2019
McCallum is a vibrant and sensitive exponent of Agnew’s music
Limelight Magazine February 2020
Acclaimed Australian pianist and pedagogue Stephanie McCallum has provided an excellent introduction to his solo piano works, many of which receive their first recording here. […] McCallum brings her talent and virtuosity together with a keen sense for historical significance and enjoyment, on a disc that belongs in the collection of every connoisseur of Australian music.
