Mompou: Música callada I-XXVIII - Books 1-4 (complete)

Arcadi Volodos is one of the world’s best pianists, celebrated as a “genius” and the “new Horowitz” for the unique combination of outstanding virtuosity and profound and expressive musicality.

Volodos devotes his new CD to the hardly known Catalan composer Frederic Mompou. He believes that Mompou’s solo piano works are of outstanding quality and open new worlds.

The fact that Mompou’s music is hardly known is a key to success for this CD. It can only reveal its deep und unique quality in the magnificent interpretation of Volodos.

The music of Catalonian composer Federico Mompou (1893-1987) is almost completely unknown today. Unjustly so, in the opinion of Russian star pianist Arcadi Volodos, who has devoted his new solo CD to this remarkable musical personality.

Carrying on the tradition established by his Spanish colleagues Enrique Granados and Isaac Albéniz, Mompou's works are subtle and delicate, mysterious and intimate, with a shimmering Impressionist palette. Mompou's role models are always in evidence in his many piano pieces: Chopin and Scriabin, Satie and Debussy. Yet in quiet, unobtrusive fashion, Mompou evolves a musical cosmos entirely his own from these models: his music is a true discovery.

Volodos has chosen for this CD pieces from the Mompou cycles Scènes d´Enfants (1915-18), Charmes (1920/21) and Música Callada (1959-67), which were among the composer's own favourites. In the last few years, Arcadi Volodos has regularly played works by the Catalonian composer in his recitals, prompting the Süddeutsche Zeitung to refer to his "deep sensitivity for inspired nuance".

Mompou was of Spanish and Basque background and as a young man associated with the musicians of the Groupe des Six in Paris led by Jean Cocteau, with Stravinsky and Ravel, and with Gide and Valéry. He performed his own works with some success in the Parisian salons without directly working toward this goal. The piano was his instrument, and Música Callada was his greatest and last cycle. Performed by MDG artist Steffen Schleiermacher.

This title was released for the first time in 2006.

Steinway & Sons is proud to announce this new release of piano music by Spanish composer Federico Mompou, delicately performed by a member of the "vanguard of young artists with interest in unusual repertoire and the technique to give it life" (Classics Today).

Featuring the mystical masterpiece Musica Callada, the 28 pieces on this disc highlight Mompou's intimate, improvisatory style.

Jenny Lin, acclaimed for her "remarkable technical command" and "gift for melodic flow" by The New York Times, shines on thes deeply personal works by Mompou, which she describes as "pure, naked, delicate and undecorated, with nowhere to hide".