Gubaidulina: Musical Toys

Award-winning Malaysian pianist Mei Yi Foo gives the world premiere recording of Unsuk Chin’s extremely virtuosic Piano Études, which take up and develop on the legacy of Ligeti’s. Following the artist’s recommendation, the listener is invited to create their own playlist, and playfully intersperse these among the other “musical toys” on the album, including Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata and Gubaidulina’s Musical Toys.

Following the critical success of her Haydn/Mozart series Claire-Marie le Guay concentrates her new recording on the Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina. This portrait features the beautiful piano works Invention (1974), Chaconne (1963), Musical Toys (1969) and Introitus (1978), a chamber concerto with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra conducted by Jean-Jacques Kantorow.

This contemporary music specialist has recorded various twentieth-century “children’s pieces” of picturesque, bold, humorous and abstract character. The pianist also includes four miniatures which he has composed himself.

“Dmitri Shostakovich and Anton Webern have had the greatest influence on my work. Although my music bears no apparent traces of it, these two composers taught me the most important lesson of all: to be myself.” So says Sofia Gubaidulina when asked about her own music. Marcela Roggeri plays these works with the spirit and spontaneity that she and the composer have in common and which characterise her very strong temperament.