Richard Toop
Richard Toop's annotations and liner notes sit beside programmes of Cage prepared piano, Mozart piano trios, late Beethoven sonatas and unaccompanied cello. He writes as a musicologist who has spent decades inside postwar scores, tracking structure, colour and silence.
His work on the page grew from close contact with the music itself: he was Stockhausen's teaching assistant in Cologne, and later wrote the New Grove entries on Stockhausen and Brian Ferneyhough and a monograph on Ligeti. In 1967, as a pianist, he gave the first documented solo performance of Satie's Vexations in a twenty-four-hour London marathon. On these discs his notes serve the listener rather than the archive, clarifying preparations, forms and the temper of each piece without smothering the sound.
Credits
Cello
Howard Penny had lived in Vienna for fifteen years, returning periodically to Australia. Here he plays a selection from the modern solo cello repertoire in performances of real conviction and focus.
Piano Sonatas Opp. 109, 110, 111
Stephen Savage, English-born and long based in Queensland, brings a deep personal attachment to Beethoven’s final three piano sonatas. These affectionate readings have drawn considerable critical praise.
Mozartrois: The Complete Piano Trios
Recorded in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House, this two-disc set is a landmark Australian account of Mozart’s piano trios, and includes the seventh and most recently identified work of the group.
John Cage: Works for Prepared Piano
Nigel Butterley is well known as one of Australia’s finest composers. He was also an accomplished pianist, and by this 1993 release had been performing these Cage works for more than twenty years. Critics have long praised the style and colour he draws from the prepared piano.