New South African Piano Music

NEO MUYANGA: Hade Tata, KEVIN VOLANS (b.1949): PMB Impromptu, A Garden of Forking Paths, MICHAEL BLAKE (b.1951): Broken Line, Seventh Must Fall, ROB FOKKENS (b.1975): 5 Miniatures, HENDRIK HOFMEYR (b.1957): Partita Africana, PETER KLATZOW (b.1945): Barcarolle (Arnold Schoenberg in Venice), DAVID EARL (b.1951): Song Without Words, Barcarolle, DAVID KOSVINER (b.1957): Mbira Melody II.

Description: An attractive recital of miniatures by South African composers, all but one of whom will probably be unfamiliar to most. In their own ways, many of the composers incorporate elements of the traditional musics of the region; Muyanga's tribute to Mandela is pentatonic and solemn, with a dance-like section and references to songs of healing and struggle; Blake incorporates traditional African rhythms and melodies with a chant-like narrow pitch range; Fokkens employs characteristic South African melodic contours. The two movements of Hofmeyer's Partita Africana are an imposing prelude and lyrical, stately fugue given a particular flavor by modal inflections of African music, followed by an energetic dance in irregular metre and modal melody, while Kosviner's piece evokes the African thumb piano (mbira) with a simply accompanied melody characteristic of the instrument. The others draw their inspiration from elsewhere; one of Volans' pieces is rapid and post-minimalistic, the other meditative and impressionistic, and Katzow's early-Schoenbergian Venetian barcarolle is a tribute to The Viennese composer, in a chromatic idiom which is shared by Earl's more Romantic Turkish one. Renée Reznek (piano).