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Track(s) taken from CDA67967

Bach goes to town 'Prelude and Fugue in swing'

composer

Piers Lane (piano)
Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
CD-Quality:
Studio Master:
CD-Quality:
Studio Master:
Recording details: June 2012
Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk, United Kingdom
Produced by Rachel Smith
Engineered by Ben Connellan
Release date: September 2013
Total duration: 3 minutes 4 seconds

Cover artwork: Portrait of Piers Lane by John Beard (b1943)
www.johnbeardart.com
 

Reviews

‘This superbly recorded disc (played on a gorgeously voiced Steinway) is Lane's love letter to the piano. I wish more pianists would share their guilty pleasures like this’ (Gramophone)

‘Lane in wonderful, debonair mode here, sparkling through a personal encore selection from Jamaican Rumba to a Toccata by his own father, and from Myra Hess to Dudley Moore’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘Puts smiles on our faces and tears in our eyes … Katharine Parker's Down Longford Way grows from an Ivor Novello-like charm into an opulently Romantic piece of striking contrast and colour, indeed the perfect choice with which to launch the disc. The playing throughout is first-class: witty where it needs to be, reflective and joyous elsewhere … Lane is a dynamic, insightful pianist who is able to bring a new perspective to the repertoire. His renditions of the Grainger and Bach / Hess pieces are quite beautiful, and in Mayerl's Marigold I can hardly imagine a more heartfelt account’ (International Record Review)

‘Piers Lane, one of the most versatile pianists around, presents many sides of himself in a selection of pieces that may seem topsy-turvy, incongruous even, but there are some wonderful and brilliant things here to be re-united with or discovered, and each piece is superbly played, with complete identification, and beautifully recorded too—just like a piano should sound, with all of Lane’s colours, dynamics and inflections faithfully relayed’ (Classical Source)
Alec Templeton (1910–1963) was an American born in Cardiff. He was blind from birth, but blessed with absolute pitch and an uncanny ability to improvise. He was only twelve when he began to be heard on the BBC, and studied at both the Royal College and the Royal Academy in London. At the age of eighteen he wrote a Trio for flute, oboe and piano that was praised by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Seven years later Jack Hylton, the British bandleader, took Templeton to the States, where he was broadcasting a series of radio programmes for the Standard Oil Company. Templeton remained there, becoming an American citizen in 1941. He had enormous success as a radio and television personality, appearing frequently on The Bing Crosby Show, later having his own programme called It’s Alec Templeton Time. He recorded Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue for Columbia in the 1940s and later Gershwin’s Concerto in F with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Critics praised his musicianship and interpretation, while noting his somewhat limited technical prowess. Bach goes to town, subtitled Prelude and Fugue in swing and covered by Benny Goodman’s band in 1938, has become a perennial favourite. Templeton notes it was written as Bach might have written it, had he been alive today. He also noted that music doesn’t need to be ponderous to be good. It can be everything from Bach to jazz. His British sense of humour often revealed itself in his titles: Mozart Matriculates, Scarlatti Stoops to Conga and the Pocketsize Sonata for clarinet and piano. His more ambitious piano works include the Concertino lirico (1942) and the Gothic Concerto for piano and orchestra (1954).

from notes by Piers Lane © 2013

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