Nicolaou - Etudes & Frames
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Label: Pentatone
Cat No: PTC5187041
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Instrumental
Release Date: 27th January 2023
Contents
Artists
Tamara Stefanovich (piano)Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Works
Etudes (15) for pianoFrames for piano four hands
Artists
Tamara Stefanovich (piano)Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
About
On Etudes & Frames, pianist Tamara Stefanovich presents the music of contemporary master Vassos Nicolaou. In his Etudes, Nicolaou uses virtuosity as a means to explore forms made of complex rhythms, great speed and multi-layered sound. Each of the fifteen etudes has an evocative title, and focuses on specific geometrical-choreographical movements of the hands on the keyboard, as well as on a basic acoustical idea. For Stefanovich, this set has a structural integrity not seen since Ligeti’s Etudes. Nicolaou’s etudes are paired with Frames for two pianos, on which Stefanovich is joined by Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Stefanovich studied together with Nicolaou and has been an important advocate of his music ever since. Dedicating an entire album to his music is a dream come true.
Tamara Stefanovich is captivating audiences worldwide with a broad repertoire ranging from Bach to contemporary composers. Etudes & Frames is her third Pentatone album, after having released Influences (2019) and Visions (2022, together with Pierre-Laurent Aimard).
Tamara Stefanovich is captivating audiences worldwide with a broad repertoire ranging from Bach to contemporary composers. Etudes & Frames is her third Pentatone album, after having released Influences (2019) and Visions (2022, together with Pierre-Laurent Aimard).
Sound/Video
Paused
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1Etudes for piano: 1. Anodos (2008)
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2Etudes for piano: 2. Monologos (2008)
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3Etudes for piano: 3. Delays (2008)
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4Etudes for piano: 4. Chimes (2008)
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5Etudes for piano: 5. Mirrors / Interventions (2008)
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6Etudes for piano: 6. Animadóttir (2013)
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7Etudes for piano: 7. Entrap (2013)
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8Etudes for piano: 8. Point de jonction (2013)
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9Etudes for piano: 9. Présence d’une absense (2013)
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10Etudes for piano: 10. Filter (2013)
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11Etudes for piano: 11. Hast Du Angst? (2013)
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12Etudes for piano: 12. Distory (2015)
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13Etudes for piano: 13. Teso (2016)
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14Etudes for piano: 14. Rebounds (2016)
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15Etudes for piano: 15. Tamara (2016)
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16Frames for piano four hands (2016/17)
Europadisc Review
Just a couple of months ago we welcomed a new disc of piano Etudes by the early 19th-century composer Hélčne de Montgeroult, hailed as a 'missing link' between Mozart and Chopin. Montgeroult was one of the composers who laid the groundwork for the étude (study) to become one of the defining genres of the piano repertoire. Now we welcome a new disc of Etudes which - although not released until next week - is so captivating and compelling that we just had to post an advance review. Pianist Tamara Stefanovich has already made quite a name for herself in 20th-century and contemporary repertoire. Here she plays the 15 Etudes by her friend and former fellow student Vassos Nicolaou (b. 1971), composed between 2008 and 2016, the majority of them written for Stefanovich herself.
Like other composers before him, Nicolaou uses the étude genre to explore aspects of piano technique - not in any methodical way, but instead focusing on different aspects (or parameters) of writing, playing and sound in each piece. Important subjects for him are resonance, interplay between the free and the strict (or 'mechanical'), register and dynamics. All these have consequences for the player, and this cycle is both highly demanding in technical terms and surely the most musically rewarding set of études since György Ligeti's cycle of 18 pieces (1985-2001, spread across three books).
Stefanovich rises to the highly virtuosic challenges of these pieces with enormous verve and an unflinching technique, in performances that are unlikely to be bettered. The music itself is far removed from the world of Philip Glass and his imitators, closer to Ligeti, but with added tonal crunch, and stylistic reference points include Messiaen and Webern among others, yet the combination of sounds, and the technical and musical recurring preoccupations, are unique to Nicolaou.
To give some idea of the sheer range of these demanding yet fascinating pieces, here are our expanded listening notes for each piece in the cycle:
1. Anodos ('upwards'): the set bursts into life with the first etude in the piano's lowest register but, as the title suggests, the music is drawn increasingly to the piano's upper register.
2. Monologos: the second Étude starts with gestural and harmonic hints of Messiaen, then getting stuck in a rapid repeated-note groove, before suggestions of Messiaen-like birdsong at the close, and what Nicolaou describes as 'Balkan-like dance music'.
3. Delays: low-register figuration suggestive of breathing is superimposed with high-pitched percussive sounds before leading into a more regular main section, and then a series of virtuosic, increasingly forceful passages towards the final cadence. At just over 5 minutes, this is the longest of the Études.
4. Chimes: this piece evokes 'Aeolian' wind chimes, and is of a complexity that demands up to six staves of music! A slow underlying pulse helps to suggest the randomness of the wind, and the harmonic layers hint at major-minor duality, before the music fades away.
5. Mirrors / Interventions: here the musical objects are mirrored, the mirror forms distinguished from their originals by register and dynamics, with a highly complex foreground; the objects (i.e. motifs and gestures) become more 'competitive', occupying the same register and using more forceful dynamics.
6. Animadóttir: the 'Daughter of Anima [soul]' - a baritone melody is overlaid with higher gestures of sympathetic resonance. These gestures seem to take over in the instrument's middle register, before finally evaporating.
7. Entrap: inspired by the piano playing of Oscar Peterson and Art Tatum, this has a free-flowing right hand against a slow left hand ostinato. The musical material is taken to highly virtuosic (and registral) extremes, creating a piece that is enormously physically demanding for the player.
8. Point de jonction: this is a multi-layered piece, with carefully managed use of resonance, and disruptions that take the music into almost orchestral textures using the whole gamut of the instrument.
9. Presence d'une absence: this features a dynamic interplay between lively bursts and their resonance - a sort of fitful, start-stop progression; this is another piece that ends by gravitating towards the piano's highest register.
10. Filter: a calm, relatively subdued piece, in which the release of notes within chords is staggered - another instance of Nicolaou's fascination with the resonances created by his material, ending with trills and sustained chords at the extremes of the keyboard.
11. Hast Du Angst? (Are you afraid?): there are hints here of the fast middle movement of Webern's op.27 Variations for piano. This is agitated music, treating the same material as Etude no.8, but in a very different, maximalist manner; even a passage of coruscating upper-register figuration cannot contain its forcefulness, yet it ends with a long-held sostenuto.
12. Distory: this carries forward the energies of the preceding number. In Nicolaou's own words, this is 'an etude about playing the piano', yet the hands are rarely synchronised, and once again the upper register comes to the fore, this time in repeated, loop-like patterns.
13. Teso: this features possibly the most explosive, thunderous opening of all the Etudes, which evaporates into ghostly nocturnal figures, but then becomes increasingly tense, with explosive cadenzas before an elusive close.
14. Rebounds: mechanical figuration is set against a harmonic backdrop provided by the pitches C, E and F sharp. In its early stages the music is reminiscent of some of the 'mechanical' electronic interludes in Birtwistle's opera The Mask of Orpheus; there is an 'antagonistic' central episode, before a reverberant coda.
15. Tamara: another highly complex piece, its material harking back to the first Etude, and similarly embedding canonic writing, as well as machine-like textures, before a delicate, resonating close, the last high notes barely sounding yet percussive.
Whether or not Nicolaou adds to this cycle in future, the set as a whole is likely to be a new touchstone of piano writing at the more demanding end of the spectrum, yet the composer's central concerns are focussed on many of the essential elements of music. It is this underlying simplicity, and the beguiling combinations to which it gives rise, that make this set so convincing. Under Stefanovich's hands, every piece in this vivid 2017 recording (made in cooperation with West German Radio) is projected with astonishing vividness.
And the disc is made even more attractive by a substantial bonus. At a little over 10 minutes, Frames for piano hands (in which Stefanovich is joined by Pierre-Laurent Aimard) is the longest single piece on the disc. Composed in 2016/17 as a wedding present for Stefanovich and Aimard, this is another highly virtuosic work, again exploring sonorities as much as themes and figurations. A simple celeste-like theme is a nod to the couple's young son. For Nicolaou, the resonance underlying the complex surface is suggestive of 'togetherness'. The centre of the work returns to the mechanistic world of many of the etudes, but with a complementary delicacy, and the intensity builds through staggering asynchronicity and ricochet-like repeated notes, dissipating into the high register before the depths are reengaged. There are brief explosions of energy, as well as a return of simpler material, the music increasingly fractured before the careful fade-out of the close.
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