Etudes is a collection of virtuoso piano pieces: Jill Richards playing Kevin Volans' Etudes and Volans playing Liszt. In a career spanning some 60 years, Volans has been celebrated as "one of the planet's most distinctive and unpredictable voices" (The Village Voice) and "one of the most remarkable musical minds of our time" (International Record Review). He was listed as one of the 50 most important living composers by BBC Music Magazine in 1997. A native of South Africa but also former student of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel in Germany, Volans has a singular musical vision, allowing the energetic, intricate patterning and the rhythmic layering of the music (and textiles) of Sub-Saharan Africa to interact with the experimental approach and reach of the post-war avant-garde. In the ?tudes, the listener is invited into a sound world where at times extremely complex and challenging arrangements create the illusion of four hands piano playing, extended techniques give rise to ethereal sonorities, patterning and chordal variations are shortened and lengthened to collide in accented battles. Jill Richard's performances showcase a remarkable technical mastery as well as a deep understanding of the composer's intention. These recordings are the product of a formidable dynamic arising from a twenty three year working-relationship between the composer and the performer, one that delivers these expertly nuanced and paced performances. "Kevin always says that the piece isn't finished until he's worked with the players. If something isn't the way he wants it, he changes it on the spot. He expects perfection from himself and others, which is challenging but it's also wonderful as he is so clear about what he wants." (Jill Richards) The Etudes release not only marks Volans' significant contribution to the creation of new music, but also highlights Volans' immense talent as a performer, as he also makes his debut release of some of Liszt's fiendishly difficult works for solo piano, taken from recordings in Volans' own personal archives. "At the turn of this century I realised that in the forty years of my composing life I had written only two solo piano pieces, despite having started out as a pianist, a devoted fan of Liszt and Chopin, as well as having written my dissertation on Stockhausen's piano works. So, taking a cue from an artwork I love, Marcel Duchamp's Bo?te-en-valise, which consists mainly of miniatures of Duchamp's own work, I decided to start out with transcriptions of my own pieces for other media. The Etudes, then, are autobiographical in nature. My aim was to write a set of Etudes that were on a similar level of technical difficulty as the Liszt Etudes d'execution transcendente, which I've struggled with as a pianist for many years.
