Stephanie McCallum
Stephanie McCallum brings formidable technique and real character to Alkan’s transcendental études and to the sharp edges of Boulez, Xenakis and Australian new music. Thunderous drama sits beside poised colour and clarity.
She has made the major-key and minor-key Alkan study cycles her ground: millions of notes, programme drama, funeral marches and octave storms served with control rather than blur. The Symphony drawn from Op. 39 sits beside the slightly mad Chanson de la folle and the first recording of Magnard’s Promenades, Parisian character pieces given room to breathe. On Notations she sets Boulez’s twelve miniatures and Xenakis’s Herma beside Henderson, Butterley, Dench, Sutherland and Humble, bringing light into dense modern writing without sanding off its bite. Chamber work with austraLYSIS and colleagues keeps the same appetite for risk. Whether the score is nineteenth-century French virtuosity or hard contemporary piano, the playing has elan, temperament and the stamina the music demands.
Stephanie McCallum is featured on the following titles
Alkan & Magnard
Continuing her Alkan series, Stephanie McCallum takes on the monumental Symphony from Alkan’s Opus 39, with his slightly mad Chanson and the world premiere recording of Magnard’s Promenades.
Alkan: Twelve Studies in All the Major Keys, Op. 35
Alkan's monumental Twelve Studies in all the Major Keys, Op. 35, is a virtuosic tour de force for the pianist. Each study develops an aspect of technique, yet each is pure Alkan – millions of notes and thunderous drama. McCallum has been praised worldwide for her Alkan performances, with prodigious technique and poised musicianship.
Notations
Stephanie McCallum is a Sydney-based pianist who specialises in contemporary music. Her performances bring light and colour to these works. Music by Xenakis and Boulez sits well beside a generation of Australian composers.
Stephanie McCallum also appears on
There Came a Wind like a Bugle: Chamber Music by Nigel Butterley
Chamber works spanning some thirty years by Nigel Butterley, one of Australia’s finest composers, for soloists, song and choir.
Harbour
This CD features the remarkable voice of the septuagenarian tenor Gerald English in works written especially for him by Andrew Ford. A star-studded gathering of musicians accompanies him and also plays three solo works.
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.
Windows in Time
austraLYSIS is the brainchild of Roger Dean, and exists in several incarnations, including a live electronics band. Here they are in their standard chamber music format and have chosen a programme in which the linchpins are Xenakis and the music of New Zealand composer Lyell Cresswell.