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John Casken: Stolen Airs

John Casken

John Casken: Stolen Airs
The performers are some of the cream of the younger generation, and as such it is difficult to imagine finer performances than these...This is a terrific, well-filled disc, and one that should...

John Casken: Stolen Airs

John Casken

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The performers are some of the cream of the younger generation, and as such it is difficult to imagine finer performances than these...This is a terrific, well-filled disc, and one that should...

About

Stolen Airs' is a collection of chamber works featuring piano works by the eminent British composer John Casken, performed by various artists including the Gould Trio and Kenneth Hamiton. This is a release with strong Mancunian connections as John was professor of music at the university for many years.

The idea of creating a CD of his chamber music in which the piano features in every piece (although a piece for solo piano is hardly chamber music) was the composers initial thought, and the range of pieces from 2002 (Piano Trio) to 2008 (Shadowed Pieces), to three more recent pieces featuring cello and then horn, as well as solo piano, created not only a nice sequence but also an interesting variety. The recordings took place in Cardiff University School of Music and at The University of Manchester in the Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall, in which John Casken played a major role in creating nearly 20 years ago.

Contents and tracklist

I. Shadowed by the Blackened Tree
Track length1:48
II. ...By a Far-Away Song
Track length2:15
III. ...By Shadows Past
Track length3:52
IV. ...By a Quickening Moon
Track length2:12
V. ...By Forgotten Voices
Track length3:02
VI. ...By the Harrowed Land
Track length2:37
I. Haunting Bough (I.)
Track length1:39
II. Swinging Bough
Track length2:00
III. Shaded Bough
Track length4:48
IV. Weathered Bough
Track length1:44
V. Silvered Bough
Track length2:36
VI. Haunting Bough (II.)
Track length2:46
I. Shadows
Track length2:54
II. Striding the Line
Track length2:10
III. Dreams
Track length4:10
IV. Dancing the Line
Track length3:21
V. Memories
Track length7:57

Awards and reviews

September/October 2020

The performers are some of the cream of the younger generation, and as such it is difficult to imagine finer performances than these...This is a terrific, well-filled disc, and one that should bring Casken more into the spotlight; he deserves to be there.

10th November 2019

Stolen Airs, for cello (Philip Higham) and piano (Alasdair Beatson), makes a superb, haunting single-movement sonata. Serpents of Wisdom is an impressive invention for horn (Alec Frank-Gemmill) and piano; and Casken’s Piano Trio is a powerful paraphrase of his Tolstoyan opera, God’s Liar.
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