Christopher Williams

Christopher Williams – Lures for Feeling: Piano Music of Richard Elfyn Jones (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 47:24 minutes | 784 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Willowhayne Records

Lures for Feeling takes its name from Welsh composer Richard Elfyn Jones’ Piano Sonata No. 2, which derives from an assertion by one of his philosophical heroes, Alfred North Whitehead, who wrote that the actual world is essentially the outcome of ‘an aesthetic order derived from the immanence of God.’ His book Music and The Numinous aims to clarify this in the light of the composer’s own experience as one who, when exercising his creative freedom, has always felt that elements outside oneself have a controlling role in one’s work. In his case, and certainly in that of many tonal composers, it is the obvious demands of the God-given harmonic series that is the rather obvious pointer towards the numinous character of music in its various aspects, whether or not the composer or his/her audience is aware of that. This album also includes his Piano Sonata No. 1, Fantasy Evocations and other recent works, including the heartfelt Threnody for Ukraine. Christopher Williams is well-known through is acclaimed recordings for Grand Piano and Willowhayne Records.

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Christopher Williams – Mendelssohn: Piano Rarities (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:19 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos

This album of rarely heard piano music by Mendelssohn displays the composer’s wide emotional range and features two youthful sonatas, composed when he was just eleven years old. Pianist Christopher Williams has previously recorded acclaimed albums of music by Semyon Barmotin for Grand Piano (GP799, 865, 866) and makes his Naxos label debut with this album.

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Christopher Williams – Barmotin: Piano Music, Vol. 2 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:33 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Grand Piano

The published works of Barmotin (1877–1939) date from a particularly rich flowering of Russian culture that preceded the Revolution of 1917. From the Romantic expansiveness of the Piano Sonata, Op. 4 to the colourful and reflective Tableaux de la vie enfantine, the attraction of Barmotin’s piano music stems from his spirited artistic personality, the refinement of his harmonic language and mastery of form. Christopher Williams continues his acclaimed rediscovery of a composer who allows the emotional character of each musical moment to flourish.
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Christopher Williams – Barmotin: Piano Music, Vol. 3 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:14 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Grand Piano

A student of Rimsky-Korsakov and Balakirev and a contemporary of Stravinsky and Rachmaninov, Semyon Alexeyevich Barmotin (1877-1939) flourished in the years before the Russian Revolution. His was probably the first Ballade for solo piano written by a Russian composer and this large-scale work exemplifies his perfect control of expansive form, Lisztian virtuosic impulse and thematic variety. The two sets of Morceaux enshrine other essential elements of his art – folkloric influences, crystalline sonorities and true expressive depth. Christopher Williams’ third instalment in this acclaimed cycle features all world première recordings.

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