Ian Venables (b.1955): Complete Works for Solo Piano / Graham J. Lloyd

Recommendation

I've listened to this CD many times and have enjoyed it more on each successive hearing. There is much beautiful music here. When it came time to select a track to feature as a sample, it wasn't easy because I have many favorites. This New Naxos CD contains the complete solo piano music of Ian Venables, who was born in Liverpool in 1956. Four of the six pieces appear here as world premiere recordings, and it is all beautifully performed by pianist Graham J. Lloyd.

A highly respected composer of art songs (BBC Music wrote "a song composer as fine as Finzi and Gurney"), Venables' melodic and expressive gifts are also integral to the whole of his output for solo piano. His considerable experience setting words to music is heard in these piano pieces as a remarkable economy and sincerity of expression. Textures are often very simple, sometimes stark. His alluring harmonies flow and unfold with an impressionistic atmosphere, yet there can be a romantic sweep to the music at times as well. Two composers that came to mind repeatedly as I listened to Venables' piano music were Villa-Lobos and Ravel.

Poetic and highly evocative, the music is at turns, poignant, euphoric, wistful and whimsical. You feel as though there is a narrative behind it; a story is being told. If you were unfamiliar with the composer and listening to this for the first time, it might be difficult to guess what region of the world it comes from, or for that matter, the period of time. In the album notes, Mr. Venables describes The Grotto from The Stourhead Follies as "feelings and changing moods of structures that find themselves out of time and place ..." This characterization seems fitting to much of the music here.

In the end, I went with the opening work on the album to provide as a sample. Hopefully you have been enjoying it, and are forming your own favorable impression. Courtesy of Naxos, it is the Caprice, Op. 35, and even though the music comes from a broad period of time (between 1975 and 2001), in terms of how tonal or dissonant it is, the Caprice fairly characterizes all of the music on this excellent CD.

Album Overview

As a composer of art-song, Ian Venables is considered to be one of the most important writing today. The Songs of Ian Venables (8.572514), Volume 21 of Naxos’ critically acclaimed English Song Series, was the first devoted to a living composer. This new recording introduces us to his music for solo piano and brings together works written between 1975 and 2001. It is Venables’ singular melodic gift and highly inventive use of harmony that combine to give us works that range from the deeply reflective and wistful to those in a lighter vein, full of charm and joie de vivre.

Source: Naxos

Ian Venables

Ian Venables, composer Ian Venables was born in Liverpool in 1955 and was educated at Liverpool Collegiate Grammar School. He studied music with Professor Richard Arnell at Trinity College of Music, London and later with Andrew Downes, John Mayer and John Joubert at the Birmingham Conservatoire of Music. Since 1986 he has lived in Worcester. www.ianvenables.com

Graham J. Lloyd, piano

Graham J. Lloyd, piano Graham J. Lloyd was born on the Wirral in 1963. He began his piano studies at the relatively late age of fourteen and only four years later gave his début recital in Liverpool, in a performance of Saint-Saënsʼs Carnaval des Animaux. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester with the renowned Polish pianist Ryszard Bakst, and there, as a chamber musician, was coached by the late Denis Matthews. www.naxos.com

Thinking about purchasing this album? Follow this link for more album details or to make the purchase. Buy it now

“Not just recommended. Guaranteed.”
We stand behind every album featured on Expedition Audio. Our objective is to take the monetary risk out of music exploration. If you order this album from HBDirect.com and do not like it you can return it for a refund.