Suk: Piano Works - complete

Stepan, Pavel

SU 3820-2

Josef Suk (1874-1935), the leading exponent of the Czech Modern movement, was so talented that he began to study at Prague Conservatory when he was only eleven. He began to compose at an early age, and although he was a violinist by trade he wrote for the piano throughout his entire life. As much as Suk loved to write, composition was a "sideline" for him, (much as it was for Gustav Mahler, whose was primarily employed as head of the Vienna Opera), whereas his "full time job" was his career as the second violinist of the famous Czech Quartet, with which he traveled the world, playing thousands of concerts between 1892 and 1933. The piano was Suk's intimate artistic confessor and interpreter, privy to his innermost feelings and moods. It would be only a slight exaggeration to call his piano works a piano reduction of his abstract musical and creative workshop. The career of Czech pianist Pavel Stepan (1925-1998), who recorded this collection, continues a great family tradition; his father is the composer, pianist, theorist and Suk specialist Vaclav Stepan. His five LP recording of the complete piano works of Josef Suk was awarded a Supraphon Gold Album in 1978. His friend and chamber music partner Ilja Hurnik has written that "the art of Pavel Stepan is an art of suggestive hints, which thanks to his precise technique.

Works:

• Suk: About Friendship
• Suk: About Mother
• Suk: Epilogue, Op. 37
• Suk: Fantasy-Polonaise
• Suk: Humoresque
• Suk: Impressions of Summer
• Suk: Lullabies
• Suk: Moods
• Suk: Nálady, Op. 10
• Suk: Piano Compositions Op. 12
• Suk: Spring
• Suk: Spring Impressions, Op. 22a
• Suk: Suite
• Suk: Summer Impressions, Op. 22b
• Suk: Village Serenade
• Suk: Zivotem a snem (Things Lived and Dreamt), Op. 30

CD

25.11.2011

099925382025