Leon McCawley – Natural Connection: Piano Music Inspired by the Natural World (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:00 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings
SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce the release of Natural Connection, a captivatingly lyrical new recording by pianist Leon McCawley featuring music for solo piano inspired by the natural world.
The effect of the ever-changing seasons has been a perpetual inspiration for composers since Ancient Greece’s Delphic hymns and before, down to the present day, arguably finding its richest expression, as Robert Matthew-Walker’s erudite booklet notes argue, in the generations who alternatively espoused Romanticism and Impressionism.
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Leon McCawley – Haydn : Sonatas & Variations (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:18:54 minutes | 596 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings
A truly invigorating new release from SOMM this month, brings us Leon McCawley in a recording of four Haydn Piano Sonatas together with the set of Variations in F minor (Sonata – Un piccolo divertimento). Siva Oke first heard Leon play Haydn during a recital for the Chopin Society and was immediately struck by the many wonderful qualities he brought to his playing which captured classical purity and pristine articulation coupled with warmth, plasticity and wit. Widely acknowledged as one of Britain’s foremost pianists, McCawley has forged a highly successful career since winning First Prize in the 1993 International Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna and Second Prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition, building on his earlier success as Winner of the Piano Section of BBC Young Musician of the Year in 1990. Since then, his impressive discography which includes the much-lauded complete cycle of Mozart Sonatas for Avie has established him as a pianist of great integrity and variety, bringing freshness and vitality to classical, romantic and 20th century repertoire. The more than 50 piano sonatas of Haydn were the first by any composer, for it was he who first applied the word ‘Sonata’ to a solo piano piece. Haydn’s influence on Mozart, Beethoven, and all the other great composers who followed him, was hugely significant, yet it is only in quite recent times that the importance and originality of his piano sonatas have gradually come to be recognised. The Sonatas on this disc have long been part of Leon McCawley’s recital repertoire. They reflect the range of Haydn’s genius in the genre he himself invented, and McCawley’s performances are full of the insight and virtuosity which have made him one of the major international artists currently before the public.
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Leon McCawley – Haydn: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 4 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:18:08 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings
The fourth volume in Leon McCawley’s much-praised series of Franz Joseph Haydn’s Keyboard Sonatas. Six Sonatas spanning the years 1766-80 are featured: the earliest the miniature First Sonata in G major, the latest the E-flat major Sonata No. 51, while Robert Matthew-Walker’s fascinating booklet note charts how deftly Haydn balanced the expectations of others and his own creative ambition. “Intended more to entertain than engage the intellect”, the fleet, divertimento-like First Sonata seems to anticipate the pedagogical leanings of Bartók’s Mikrokosmos more than a century and half later.
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Leon McCawley – Haydn: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 3 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:18:20 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings
“SOMM Recordings is pleased to announce the third volume in Leon McCawley’s much praised series of Franz Joseph Haydn’s Piano Sonatas.
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Leon McCawley – Haydn: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 2 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:17:02 minutes | 1,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings
McCawley’s admired first volume, pairing Haydn’s Sonatas and Variations (SOMMCD 0162), received a coveted Diapason d’Or for playing of “great intelligibility and sensitivity”. Sonata No.60 from Volume I has been selected by Diapason to appear on its next CD, Les indispensables de Diapason, featuring six Haydn sonatas played on different keyboards.
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