Music of Debussy, Brahms, Bartók, & Foster

Excerpt from the CD booklet essay by Trevor Stephenson:

The Masking of Tonality

This recording presents piano pieces from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century performed on an instrument of that era, an entirely restored 1873 English concert grand. This music is of particular interest today since many elements of our current style were developed during this period. Chief among these is the expressive sensibility requiring that the long-held unifying principle of tonality (or sense of key) be persistently masked, and occasionally dissolved. While some composers of the period attempted to dismantle tonality through rampant chromaticism and modulation (this would lead to the branch of twentieth-century music known as “atonality”), most composers continued to write in a more or less tonal fashion, but relied upon the diffuse disposition of the period instruments, tunings, and performance styles to provide an enigmatic stance. Thus, while the specific repertoire I have selected for this recording is relatively tonal in its composition, when carried out in the dusky tones of the Victorian piano (the beloved period instrument, and first cousin of the modern piano), a sense of removal prevails