Prima Facie Records

Anthony Burgess Piano Works, Volume 2 (PFCD280)

Performed by Richard Casey and Ian Buckle

1-3. Sonatina for piano [12:07]

I Moderato - Allegro II Poco Lento III Allegretto con anima

4. Moses Title music [02:34]

5. To Susan (piano four hands) [04:15]

6-8. Three Fugues [04:07]

I D minor II G major III C major

9. Untitled [03:54]

10. Natale for piano solo (Christmas 1975) [01:21]

11. Schnee in Savosa for piano duet [01:48]

12. Interlude for small organ [01:02]

13. Allegro (1983) [01:14]

14. Ringing in the sane or What I owed to joy [01:27]

15-24 Suite for four hands (piano duet) [21:40]

Overture, Menuetto, Air I, Musette, Gavotte, Air II, La Volta, Passacaglia, Hornpipe, Fantasy on The Keel Row

Total Time [55:43]

About this album

Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) was a novelist, poet, playwright, lecturer, translator and literary journalist. Best known for his literary novels, including The Pianoplayers, Earthly Powers and A Clockwork Orange, he was also a prolific composer and arranger, writing a Symphony in C, a Piano Concerto, a Violin Concerto for Yehudi Menuhin, and more than 250 other musical works. Burgess writes about his formation as a composer in This Man and Music, his musical autobiography. Piano Works Volume 2 brings together several pieces which have been very recently discovered in the Burgess archives in Texas and Manchester. Taken together, they illustrate the unexpected range and variety of his writing for piano. Some of the pieces are undated, but the most substantial work, Suite for Four Hands, can be dated to 1975, the year in which Burgess befriended the translator Susan Roberts, to whom the suite is dedicated. Previous Burgess recordings on CD have included 24 Preludes and Fugues, a selection of his orchestral music including the Shakespeare ballet Mr W.S., and The Piano Music of Anthony Burgess, a first selection of shorter piano works.

Credits

Piano Works Volume 2 was recorded on Anthony Burgess’s own Bösendorfer piano at the Burgess Foundation in Manchester, by Richard Casey and Ian Buckle. Ian Buckle appears on tracks, 5, 11 and 15-24; all other pieces are performed by Richard Casey.

Richard Casey was born in Manchester in 1966 and started playing the piano at the age of seven with Michael Callaghan and John Gough. After graduating in Music and Modern Languages at St John’s College, Cambridge, he studied piano at the Royal Northern College of Music with Marjorie Clementi and Martin Roscoe, and later with Ronan O’Hora. He has given piano recitals at many of the major music festivals including Cheltenham, Aldeburgh and Huddersfield. Richard is one of the UK’s leading exponents of contemporary music, although his repertoire extends from John Bull to Harrison Birtwistle and beyond. He has given world premières of piano works by Martyn Harry, Marc Yates, Nina Whiteman, Paul Newland and numerous others. Specialisms include Constant Lambert, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Peter Maxwell Davies and Anthony Burgess. Richard frequently gives 2-piano concerts with his duo partner, Ian Buckle, specialising in repertoire from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Since 1994 he has been pianist with the New Music Players and has performed frequently as a guest with the London Sinfonietta, Lontano and Liverpool-based Ensemble 10:10. Richard is in great demand as an orchestral pianist and regularly plays with the Hallé, BBC Philharmonic, Manchester Camerata, Manchester Concert Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Opera North, Sinfonia Viva!, Royal Northern Sinfonia and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Richard's recording of Peter Maxwell Davies’ complete piano music 1949 – 2009 was awarded the Times Literary Supplement’s CD of the year in 2012. Future projects involve recording music by Philip Grange on the Prima Facie label. Richard also regularly gives piano masterclasses and workshops for student composers. He has been teaching at the University of Manchester since 2002.