Forbes Classical CD Of The Week: A Starry-Fantastical Contemporary American Piano Concerto

...That Claude Baker is a fan of quotations, not entirely unlike his German colleague Hans Zender, also shows in the re-composition Aus Schwanengesang: Phrases of the original, orchestrated, melted and wedged into another appear before us, implied more often than literal. Like creatures or rock formations, scarcely noticeable through the thick fog, they rise out of – and retreat back into – the black sea across which we glide. And amidst his own intriguing voice, there appear distant and obvious friends again: Mahler and Beethoven, foremost. Melodically – but also characteristically, like those dark beats of drums that crack into a peaceful Schubert-quote like the ‘tattoos’ in Mahler’s Tenth…

-> Classical CD Of The Week: A Starry-Fantastical Contemporary American Piano Concerto

Claude Baker, Piano Concerto, “Aus Schwanengesang”, Indianapolis SO / Gilbert Varga & Juanjo Mena / Marc-André Hamelin Naxos