Piano Works

The new album by pianist Peter Jablonski for Ondine focuses on the piano work of Ronald Stevenson (1928-2015), a Scottish pianist, composer, thinker, writer, pedagogue and committed pacifist. This piano album is especially known for its monumental, 80-minute "Passacaglia on DSCH", a homage to Shostakovich from 1962, but also contains a selection of pianistic gems composed between 1959 and 2002. In addition to Stevenson's masterful "Peter Grimes Fantasy", the album contains four world premiere recordings, which represent only a small selection of the rich and enormous oeuvre of almost 500 piano pieces by the composer. Stevenson's musical interests were comprehensive: from his student days he studied counterpoint and was interested in the music of Purcell and the early masters. He also admired the great virtuosic tradition of Chopin and Liszt, Medtner and Rachmaninoff, Paderewski, Godowski, Sorabji and others. Stevenson not only studied all these composers and performed their works on the piano, but each of them found an honored place in his musical temple. Many of Stevenson's musical compositions are examples of the interweaving of the complexity of his musical thinking, melodies, counterpoint and harmony; he weaves his musical fabrics that preserve the broad spectrum of his creative thinking. Peter Jablonski is an internationally acclaimed Swedish pianist. He was discovered by Claudio Abbado and Vladimir Ashkenazy and has since performed and collaborated with them. He has performed and recorded the complete piano concertos of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Bartók and all piano sonatas of Prokofiev. He is praised as an "unconventional virtuoso" and has developed a diverse repertoire over his three-decade career, during which he collaborated with composers such as Witold Lutosławski and Arvo Pärt. Jablonski's extensive discography includes several award-winning recordings.