Elena Kats-Chernin
Elena Kats-Chernin AO (born 1957) is an Australian composer whose piano rags, chamber miniatures, ballet and stage scores have become central to contemporary Australian repertoire.
Born in Tashkent and trained in Moscow before settling in Australia, she has written widely for piano, chamber groups, orchestra, ballet and opera. Her piano writing ranges from the diary-like rags collected on Blue Rags (TP186) to the quiet dinner-table pieces she plays herself on Slow Food (TP196), and the larger character works championed by Lisa Moore on Purple Black and Blues (TP147).
Chamber scores such as Chamber of Horrors, Wild Rice, Still Life and Charleston Noir appear across the catalogue, including the single-composer survey Chamber of Horrors (TP181). Short pieces for harp, cello, viola, flute and guitar, marimba, clarinet quartet and two violins show the same melodic directness and rhythmic bite that mark the better-known stage works, among them the ballet Wild Swans and its much-played Eliza Aria.
Elena Kats-Chernin is featured on the following titles
Blue Silence: Australian Music for Cello and Piano
This is the first disc of its kind released in Australia: an overview of important works for cello and piano spanning 108 years. The earliest is Grainger’s Scandinavian Suite, a tour de force that deserves a place in the concert hall.
Slow Food
Food and music are true companions, yet they rarely meet in the music industry. This CD is a collaboration between composer–pianist Elena Kats-Chernin and her friend, chef Kylie Kwong.
Composer
Chamber of Horrors
Tall Poppies presents chamber music by Elena Kats-Chernin, one of Australia’s most loved composers, in works written for the musicians who play them here.
Credit: Liner Notes
Purple Black and Blues
Herself a pianist, Elena Kats-Chernin has built a substantial body of piano works. Expatriate Australian pianist Lisa Moore has long championed this music, and here gives vivid accounts of the major pieces, including Sonata Lost and Found, written for her and this recording.
Compositions by Elena Kats-Chernin also appear on
The Emerald Leopard
Josie and the Emeralds pair acclaimed early-music soprano Josie Ryan with some of Australia’s finest viol players, the Emerald City Viols. Founded in 2011, the group is known for sophisticated performances and inventive programmes of Renaissance and contemporary works, including compositions and arrangements by director Brooke Green.
Close Your Eyes and I'll Close Mine: Lullabies Old and New
Lullabies (or berceuses) have been around as long as humans have been singing their children to sleep. This CD presents a unique collection of mostly modern lullabies, many written for this project.
Flash: Marimba Miniatures
Flash is Claire Edwardes’s second Tall Poppies recording: a warm programme of marimba miniatures drawn from her pianist beginnings and life with two young daughters, pairing new Australian works with transcribed children’s piano gems on the five-octave marimba.
The Metallic Violins
This CD is crammed with world premiere performances and scintillating playing. These two violinists inspired wonderful new works by Australian composers, yielding the first recording of Australian music for two violins, from Hindson’s raunchy title piece to Finsterer’s dreamy Spherica I.
Credit: Liner Notes
Bright Vessel
Tall Poppies is proud to release Bright Vessel, an important collection of Australian works for solo oboe and oboe d’amore, gathered and performed by Stephen Robinson.
Blue Rags
Ian Munro plays contemporary piano rags by Elena Kats-Chernin, Ann Ghandar and himself, with Graeme Koehne’s Blues and Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky’s composer-portrait Silhouettes.
Still Life: Australian Music for Viola
This is the third solo viola disc on Tall Poppies, and one of the few such albums ever issued in Australia. Patricia Pollett is widely regarded as among the country’s finest musicians, and the violist who has done most to draw new works for the instrument.
An Australian Collection
Nineteen tracks drawn from the Tall Poppies catalogue, chosen to show the range and depth of Australian composition and performance across the label’s first decade.
Uluru: New Solo Cello Works for David Pereira
Twelve new Australian solo cello works written for David Pereira, celebrating the handing back of Uluru to its traditional Indigenous owners. Responses range from didgeridoo-like sonorities in Hopkins to the modernism of Dean.
Stroke
A striking programme of contemporary Australian piano music, superbly played by New York–based Australian pianist Lisa Moore. Smetanin's formidable title work, among the most demanding in the repertoire, was captured here in a single take.