Prima Facie Records

A Chinese Folk-Song Suite (PFDL022)

Composed by Ronald Stevenson, performed by Kenneth Hamilton, piano

Available via all major download and streaming providers.

I. The Washer-Woman and the Flower Girl [02:02]
II. A Song for New Year’s Day [01:55]
III. War Widow’s Lament [04:29]
IV. Beautiful Fresh Flower [01:45]
V. Song of the Crab-Fisher [02:02]

About this Album

Kenneth Hamilton, himself a student of the composer, gave the Chinese premiere of the Suite in Xinghai Concert Hall, Guangzhou, in September 2025. Following several subsequent performances in China and in Europe, he took the opportunity to record the piece “while it was still fresh in his fingers”. In 1985, the distinguished Scottish composer-pianist Ronald Stevenson (1928-2015) received an invitation to visit Shanghai Conservatory. While there, he completed his Chinese Folk Song Suite for piano solo, one of his most colourful and thoroughly enjoyable compositions.

Although the Chinese Folksong Suite is relatively short, it had a lengthy gestation over two decades. Stevenson had long been fascinated by folk music, encouraged by his epistolary friendship with the Australian composer and folk-song arranger Percy Grainger. Furthermore, he frequently expressed a fascination with oriental art and culture. “Europe is tired”, he wrote in 1971, “Western music must look to the East!”. The Chinese Folk Song Suite differs significantly from many piano arrangements of Chinese melodies in the style of “French Impressionism”. Stevenson’s influences were clearly Grainger, Alkan and Ferruccio Busoni (especially Busoni’s Indian Diary ) rather than Debussy or Ravel. The result is a series of piquantly polyphonic musical scenes that appear to unfold like a story, with the details left to the audience’s own imagination.

Credits

Cover Image: Burong Ye
Recorded at Cardiff University School of Music on 19 October 2025.
Piano: Steinway Model D (Hamburg)
Piano preparation: Ulrich Gerhartz
Piano technician: Gavin Crooks
Recording Producer: Stephen Plews
Recording Editor: Philip Hardman
Text Editor: Monika Hennemann
Mandarin Translator: Yihan Jin

You can read Kenneth Hamilton's sleeve notes from this CD on the Prima Facie blog, Recitative.

Described by Tom Service in the Guardian (UK) as an “all-round virtuoso”, by Dr Chang Tou Liang of the Singapore Straits Times as “one of the world’s most interesting and intrepid pianists”, and by Stefan Pieper in Klassik Heute (Germany) as a “pianist, scholar, radical thinker and philosopher”, Kenneth Hamilton is well-known worldwide as a recitalist and recording artist of emotional depth and striking originality. His recordings have enjoyed exceptional critical acclaim: Volume 1 of Kenneth Hamilton Plays Liszt : Death and Transfiguration , was a Gramophone “Best Classical Album of 2022”; Volume 2, Salon and Stage, was the Guardian’s “Top Classical Recording of 2023”.

Hamilton’s recordings on the Prima Facie label cover a host of composers, including Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Alkan, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Busoni, Grainger, Godowsky, Ronald Stevenson, Pedro Faria Gomes and John Casken. Several albums have become best-sellers, and all have received superb reviews: “pianistic flair and technical brilliance are the hallmarks of this winning record” (Andrew Clements, The Guardian), “Hamilton’s playing here enchanted me and kept me listening for one pleasant surprise after another, each utterly convincing…This is real music-making, not subservient reciting from a sacred text. Hamilton’s Chopin could change your whole attitude toward the role of the performer in classical music." (Ralph P. Locke, ArtsFuse), “phenomenal pianism” (Thomas Baack, Klassik Heute).

Hamilton is also a leading expert on the history of piano performance, and his ground-breaking After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance (Oxford University Press) is one of the most influential books on classical music of recent decades. It has been translated into Italian, Hungarian and Mandarin., and a revised and enlarged edition will be published in 2028 in English, German and Japanese.

Kenneth Hamilton is a Steinway Artist, and Professor at Cardiff University in Wales, where he was Head of the School of Music from 2014-2023. He has been a guest professor at Shanghai, Zhejiang, Xinghai and Xi’an Conservatories, the Central Conservatory (Beijing) and Peking University in China; PGVIM in Thailand; the Franz Liszt Academy in Hungary; the St Petersburg Conservatory in Russia; the Royal Academy of Music in the UK; and the University of Miami in the US. He is also a Distinguished Artist of the International Piano Centre at Xiamen Institute of Technology in China. A thankful student himself, he has been privileged to pass on the flame to younger performers. His own students include the Chinese-American pianist Lauren Zhang, the Maltese pianist Charlene Farrugia, and the Italian pianist Chiara Bertoglio. Hamilton’s most recent album (January 2026) is Volume 3 of his Liszt series, entitled Demonic and Devine.