program:
[01] Version for solo piano (1973) 08:58
[02] Disegno per pianoforte (1984) * 09:48
[03] Drawing 2 for solo piano (1987) 04:55
[04] Disegno 3 (Carosello for solo piano (2005)* 08:13
[05] Soil for solo piano (1983)* 15:01
[06] Disegno per clavicembalo (1982) 07:35
Total playing time: 55:05
Andrew Skouras, piano & harpsichord
* First recordings
Press:
April 2018 | Dirk Wieschollek
Greek pianist Andreas Skouras has a knack for digging, including when it comes to Scandinavian repertoire. After the remarkable recording of the little-known piano works by Kalevi Aho, he now dedicates himself to the pianistic inspirations of the Swede Anders Eliasson (1947-2013) in a complete recording of the works for keyboard instruments solo. […] Andreas Skouras cultivates previous virtues in Eliasson: He acts rhythmically extremely concisely, plays with sculptural sound presence and intellectual depth of field in equal measure and makes a real discovery out of this striking piano work!
The New Listener
December 2017, http://www.the-new-listener.de/
Anders Eliasson was one of the enormously important, if not exactly one of the most influential, composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Now one wonders: How can someone be important if he was not influential? The history of music is rich in “cases” like this one. No matter where you look: Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler, Franz Schubert and many many more - they were all regarded as musical oddballs during their lifetime, and their importance in music history was only understood decades after their death. Thus they were very important in hindsight, but were of little influence during their lifetime.
I am not the only one who is convinced that Anders Eliasson will feel the same way. Even now, a few years after the Swedish composer's tragic death, the number of CD recordings of his works is increasing, and the voices of those who consider Eliasson to be one of the great "discoveries" in music of the last century are increasing.
A fascinating CD has now been released by the Munich label NEOS, which, in the form of Eliasson's piano works, actually allows an ideal introduction to the Swede's work. Eliasson was a composer who also wrote for large, even gigantic, ensembles. But his musical germ cells are based on a system that basically gives an astonishing, in the best sense unheard of harmonic freedom through a reduction of musical cross-references according to fixed rules, which works completely differently than the system of the serialists and dodecaphones but is just as modern, actually much more progressive .
Eliasson left only a slim oeuvre for piano and harpsichord that fits comfortably on a CD album. The confrontation with this "music in a kinetic state of limbo", as the booklet text puts it so impressively, will, however, last for a long time. One searches in vain for traditional forms in Eliasson's piano works. Instead, the composer grouped his piano works primarily into what he called “disegnos” (“drawings”). From the title, memories of Debussy's "Images" come to mind. But the musical effect is quite different. While one could understand Debussy's "Images" on the one hand in reference to the Impressionist painters and on the other hand the composer had openly assigned programmatic titles, the term "Disegno" in Eliasson's work emphasizes a kind of sketchiness. This, in turn, should not mean that these are musical sketches, not fully composed works, so to speak. Rather, it is a sound impression. While one imagines Debussy's music as an oil painting, Eliasson's piano work is more like an artfully reduced charcoal drawing on laid paper.
Andreas Skouras, the pianist on this recording, is, in addition to his activities in the area of the so-called standard repertoire, an outspoken specialist in new music and a sought-after premiere pianist who has already premiered works by Wuorinen, Bolcom and Eliasson, among others. On CD he presented, among other things, recordings of the music of newcomers such as Isang Yun, Bernd Alois Zimmermann or Kalevi Aho, thereby demonstrating good taste.
The present recording, captured in an unfortunately somewhat cool and above all too thin-sounding acoustic (the chamber music hall of Deutschlandfunk has sounded better on other recordings, one must unfortunately say) is an important contribution to new music and a significant expansion of the repertoire. On the other hand, I'm not always sure whether Skouras always finds the right approach to music. I would at least wish for the undoubtedly existing lyrical aspects in Eliasson's music and the dynamic gradations to be finer (may I say: felt?).
[Grete Catus]