Hyperion Records

Here is Gottschalk’s Opus One composed when he was about fourteen years old, and interesting if only as a well-crafted piece of juvenilia. The score, ‘composée pour le piano par Moreau Gottschalk’, bears a dedication to a Madame Céline Courtois. It is a charming, if slight, example of its kind which he later rewrote as Danse ossianique, Op 12 (1850–51) RO64 (Paris, 1851). (For comments on Gottschalk and the poet ‘Ossian’, see CD 4 and the note on the two Ossian ballades.) S Frederick Starr observes of the final version of this piece ‘if the bass line were changed to a habanera rhythm or if it were syncopated, the piece as a whole would be transformed into a jaunty Caribbean dance.’

from notes by Jeremy Nicholas © 2001