Charles Owen & Katya Apekisheva – Poulenc, Debussy & Milhaud: Works for 2 Pianos (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:10:38 minutes | 2,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Orchid Classics
Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva perform a stunning selection of French 20th-century music for piano four hands. Both Milhaud and Poulenc were members of Les Six, a band of composers who specialised in producing colourful, quirky and highly original scores. Milhaud’s Scaramouche epitomises the wit and joie de vivre of this approach and has become one of his most popular works – although at the time the composer nearly forbade its publication. Poulenc combined grace and sparkling humour with a nobility that reflected his desire for a ‘return to simplicity’. His Élégie was written ‘as if improvising with a cigar in your mouth and a glass of cognac on the table’, while the Sonata for Four Hands is full of finger-crossing intricacies, and at the heart of the Sonata for Two Pianos is an Andantino described by the composer as ‘a lyrical, profound outburst… It is piano without pretence, real piano where each instrument converses with the other in perfect understanding and without interrupting.’ Debussy’s evocative Nocturnes arranged by Ravel conclude the release.
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Sacconi Quartet, Mary Bevan, Charles Owen, Roderick Williams – Roxanna Panufnik: Heartfelt (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:21:21 minutes | 1,43 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records
Since Westminster Mass (2000) established Roxanna Panufnik’s firm place among today’sleading British composers, she has often been celebrated for her choral music. Her instrumental and chamber works, however, are equally striking, filled with dazzling imagination and poetic lightness of touch. Her latest album Heartfelt encompasses compassion, tragedy and irresistible humour, while demonstrating her passion for exploring diverse musical cultures, from East Sussex to Myanmar.
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Sacconi Quartet, Mark Padmore & Charles Owen – Jonathan Dove: In Damascus (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:18 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records
Even though Jonathan Dove is best known as a vocal or choral composer, with operas and works for children forming the backbone of his output, his chamber music reveals similar predilections for narrative, drama, atmosphere and a sense of the personal. His new commission from the Sacconi Quartet, In Damascus, was inspired by the violinist Hannah Dawson s suggestion for a work that should reflect aspects of the conflict in Syria; not because music can offer any political solution, but simply as an expression of empathy, sorrow, even outrage at those terrible events. Featuring a performance by tenor Mark Padmore, the text is taken from prose-poems by Ali Safar that draw on his first- hand experiences in Syria, eloquently translated by Anne-Marie McManus. The Sacconi s present this new work alongside his string quartet work, Out of Time, and his Piano Quintet, performed with pianist Charles Owen.
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Charles Owen & Katya Apekishiva – Rachmaninov: Two-Piano Suites & Six Morceaux, Op. 11 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:29 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical, Piano
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Avie Records
Pianist Charles Owen and his regular duo partner Katya Apekisheva turn to Rachmaninov’s diverse Suites for two pianos, and the composer’s atmospheric Six Morceaux, for their first joint recording for AVIE. The co-founders of the London Piano Festival delve into the quintessentially Russian Suite No. 1, also known as “Fantasise-Tableaux”, with its poetic inspirations, and the more traditional Suite No. 2 which marked Rachmaninov’s compositional comeback after a four-year hiatus. Rounding out the album, Charles and Katya share the piano bench for the atmospheric piano-four hands Six Morceaux.
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Charles Owen – Liszt: Années de pèlerinage, Suisse Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:07:47 minutes | 1,85 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Avie Records
With his critically acclaimed AVIE Records releases of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Gabriel Faur’e and Sergei Rachmaninov to his credit, the celebrated British pianist Charles Owen scales the heights of Franz Liszt’s anthology Ann’ees de p`elerinage, Premi`ere ann’ee: Suisse (“Years of Travel, First Year: Switzerland”), which evokes the great 19th-century pianist-composer’s Swiss sojourns with aural impressions of the Alpine landscape, its peaks and valleys, mountains and streams, and the country’s distinctive folk music. Literary references abound as they do in the album’s concluding piece, the emotional B’en’ediction de Dieu dans la solitude (“The Blessing of God in Solitude”) which was inspired by a poem penned by Liszt’s friend Alphonse de Lamartine. Emotions ran equally high for Charles Owen who turned to Liszt during lockdown. The uncertainty of being homebound throughout the pandemic was eased by the extra meaning and solace of the composer’s evocations of journeying, experiencing the natural world and its sense of beauty and liberation.
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Charles Owen – Brahms: Late Piano Music, Opp. 76, 79, 116-119 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:56:03 minutes | 1,73 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Avie Records
Steinway ambassador, Guildhall professor and co-founder of the London Piano Festival, Charles Owen turns to the late piano works by Johannes Brahms for his latest AVIE release. Within this collection of Capriccios, Rhapsodies and Intermezzi, Charles reveals myriad moods with the composer harking back as well as facing forward – from evocations of Schubert, Schumann and Liszt in the Eight Klavierstücke, Op. 76; winter-like darkness in the two Op. 79 Rhapsodies; Hungarian foot-stomping dance forms in the seven Fantasies that comprise Op. 116; nostalgic contemplation in the Op. 117 Intermezzi; romantic inflections in the Op. 118 Klavierstücke which were dedicated to Clara Schumann; and the tonally forward Klavierstücke, Op. 119.
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