ISOLDE TROOST

So here it is - the third and final movement of Mon Livre Rouge! Since this week all the video edits of Mon Livre Rouge are up for the close scrutiny of... well, anyone, really! The solo piano piece, composed by Jannum Kruidhof, was finished in October 2014 and recorded in the very same month. The artists responsible for making it happen are of course the aforementioned composer, plus the incomparable sound engineer Sara Theofilova, aided and abetted by fabulous cameraman Jel

So, Philip Glass. Not exactly a challenge for any pianist, but made very interesting indeed by the choreography made to it - it's always wonderful to work with dancers. "Solo Piano" (1989) is an album of piano music composed by Philip Glass. It was produced by Kurt Munkacsi. The title of five of the seven tracks, "Metamorphosis", refers to and was inspired by the 1915 short story "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka. The silence duet is, at least for the pianist, to be compared

A couple of years ago, I heard this piece performed, and then didn't rest until I'd hunted down a copy of it. The only one I could find was the rather fancy "Limited Edition" printed by Breitkopf & Härtel in 2002 - pretty green hardcover, gold lettering, the works - which came with an introduction. Part of that is the following: "Even if "Wie die Zeit läuft!" (How time flies!) is not officially designated as a "song without words", this appellation, created by Mendelssohn him

Any piece described as "for the profit and use of musical youth desirous of learning, and especially for the pastime of those already skilled in this study" by the composer is going to be interesting at the very least. And then it turns out that J.S. Bach, the Maestro, the Undisputed First King of the Keyboard himself wrote that, and that's enough said, really. The Well-Tempered Clavier. Every pianist has played a few. They're standard repertoire basically at any time; I pers

Fauré was one of the foremost French composers of his generation. He was actually recognized as such within France at the time, but not so much outside it (except for in the UK), which is pretty notable - it tends to be the other way around! Since, when he was born in 1845, Chopin was still composing and, when he passed away in 1924, the atonal and jazz eras had started, he's often been described as "linking the end of the Romantic era to the beginning of Modernism". His thir

Grieg's Lyric Pieces are perhaps his most well-known. He's written ten books of them, 66 in total, the great majority of them following the popular style of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: short, not too complicated character pieces, mostly following an ABA form. He wrote them throughout his entire composing career - so often, that he once put in a letter (to his friend Julius Röntgen) "I have been lyric once again. Can't you please cure me of this affliction

Gaspard de la Nuit is one of the milestones within piano literature. When Ravel dreamed it up in 1909, he specifically set out to compose something more difficult from Balakirew's still-notorious Islamey. The result of that endeavour consists of three pieces, based on three poems from the French poet Aloysius Bertrand's 52 poem cycle "Gaspard de la Nuit". Ondine, the first in the trilogy, is the story of a water nymph, attempting to seduce a mortal man to come to her realm. S

Of course, I'm not an Irish Princess engaged to the King of Cornwall although dramatically in love with his nephew. But we do share a name. Therefore, my favourite final piece (or in this particular case, encore) involves dying tragically on a stage. I hope to finish it off with a stage fall as soon as I learn how to. Isoldens Liebestod is originally the final aria of - you guessed it - Isolde, from Wagner's famous opera "Tristan und Isolde". By the time the aria comes aroun