Jill Richards pf Kevin Volans pf

Diatribe 

South African composer Kevin Volans’ first instrument was the piano, but he has written little for it. Composing original piano music is difficult for a pianist, he writes, because of the conservative influence of muscle memory. The piano evolved as a resonating rather than percussion instrument, he adds; repeated figures at multiple octaves are sustained by pedalling, yet modernist composition avoids pitch-doubling.

With the Etudes, Volans addresses these barriers to modernism, drawing on his earlier compositions. The studies follow a traditional pattern of exploring a technical issue or gesture; the disc selects from the 13 composed to date, mixing the order. The etiolated Second Etude is taken from dance music that exploited blocks of static resonance. In No 4, staccato chords move at different speeds in relation to a single note, disorienting the listener.

Etude No 1 is drawn from Volans’ opera The Man with Footsoles of Wind. Here, lugubrious bluesiness struggles against overlaid polyrhythms. The sparse, minimal Sixth Etude is based on orchestral piece 100 Frames; Volans argues that the pianist achieves a more convincing dynamic balance than orchestral players with limited rehearsal time.

Performances by South African pianist Jill Richards, long-time interpreter of Volans, are exciting and compelling. The album closes with private recordings of Volans performing Liszt, a pioneer of modernist techniques – 12-tone, bitonal and whole-tone. A remarkable and unusual recording.