Finnissy: Piano Works

Pace, Ian

MEX 77402

Métier presents a landmark 4-disc box set from pianist Ian Pace in commanding performances of music by composer Michael Finnissy (b. 1946). Finnissy is widely regarded as one of Britain’s most important living composers. Pace, one of the leading interpreters of Finnissy’s work, presents an album focused around Finnissy’s epic cycle for piano, the Verdi Transcriptions, alongside the second complete recording (after the composer’s own) of the iconic English Country-Tunes, and works inspired by music of the late-18th and 19th. The result is a broad view of Finnissy’s extensive output of piano music in relation to romantic aesthetics. The album is released in anticipation of the Métier label’s upcoming celebrations of Michael Finnissy’s 80th birthday in 2026.

Finnissy’s four-book cycle of Verdi Transcriptions re-imagines Verdi’s operas through a modern lens. As Finnissy states in his liner notes, “Transcribing sound into a written form (notation) involves making significant choices. The choices can colour the ongoing exploration of that sound as ‘composition’.” The result of those choices is a monumental, late-Romantic epic.

Finnissy’s English Country-Tunes has long been considered one of his signature and most technically demanding cycles. There is a similar line of composition through transcription as the Verdi Transcriptions, only in these works, the source material is English folk music. Written in celebration of Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee, the work can also be seen as a commentary on the spirit of British patriotism at the time.

CD x 4

Metier

1.09.2025

809730740220