Helps: Shall We Dance

On this new recording for Bridge, American pianist Garrick Ohlsson presents an exceptionally personal album entitled Close Connections. The pianist writes: “Each of the five pieces on this recording is a work I have been closely associated with. Two were written for me and I’ve played all of them frequently. Music of our time always needs advocates; it needs live performance, but it also needs a way to exist for reference beyond the printed score. Each of these five composers has given me an inestimable gift. It’s time for me to give thanks, in return.”

Ohlsson’s virtuosic performances are accompanied by his very personal written commentary on the composers, their music, and their times.

This recording is an exploration of Robert Helps’s ‘subtle sound world’ (ClassicsToday.com on Naxos 8559199), and his shared history with Spectrum Concerts Berlin. Highly regarded as a ‘musician’s musician’, Helps is featured as both composer and pianist. Postlude is suffused with an atmosphere of reminiscence, and the flow of ‘endless melody’ in the Piano Quartet is comparable to Scriabin. Associations with the Second Viennese School are heard in the poetic Quintet and the virtuoso Fantasy, while the two Piano Trios mark the stylistic boundaries of his career. Helps’s Shall We Dance for piano (CD 2, Track 12) was among his last recordings.