This second volume devoted to the music of Bohemian-born Jan Hugo Vořišek charts his rapid compositional development from the early Stammbuchblatt and Impromptu in B flat to the tone-painting of the Rondos, Op.18. His early training with Václav Tomášek remained potent but so too did the new ethos of Beethoven.

His character pieces share something of Schubert’s harmonic ideas and suggest why Vořišek should be seen as a leading Viennese composer in the first quarter of the nineteenth-century.

Biljana Urban received her PhD in Music (Piano Performance) summa cum laude from the Academy of Music in Zagreb. In her native country (the former Yugoslavia) she received the most prestigious awards. She also studied at the Ecole Normale de Paris and settled in Paris in 1983. Her musicianship has been strongly influenced by Elisso Virsaladze, Tatiana Nikolayeva, and Eugene Indjic. Since 1991 she has been based in Amsterdam.

“Here, however - more than when played by the competition - his [Vořišek’s] works come off as significant expressions of early Romanticism. In particular, Urban plays Op.20 with magnificent breadth and weight.” – Culture Catch, Best New Classical Albums of 2014 List (Vol.1)