Susman: Quiet Rhythms Book I
Nicolas Horvath, piano
“… La musique miroite, danse dans une joie extatique, frémissante au bord du silence …” (“… The music shimmers, dances in ecstatic joy, quivering on the edge of silence …”) – Inactuelles, musiques singulières
“… textually shimmering and harmonically ravishing …”
– Gramophone
“… a powerful emotional experience…”
– New Music Buff
“… haunting settings mesmerize…”
– textura
“… crystalline music …”
– Fanfare
“… hypnotic …”
– Spellbinding Music
Collection 1001 Notes presents Quiet Rhythms Book I, a new album that brings together American composer William Susman and French pianist Nicolas Horvath.
Susman writes, “In the late hours of the night, I composed Quiet Rhythms touching on a reservoir of moods and ideas. I wrote Book I of this four book piano series in 2010. The music was intended for me to perform in public and I gave several performances over the next few years while continuing to compose three more books.”
Quiet Rhythms Book I includes 11 solo pieces for piano. Each piece has two sections: a prologue followed an action. The actions, which were composed first, are lively syncopated pieces. The prologues, offer a preview, a kind of “smoothed-out” version of the action.
Nicolas Horvath’s recording presents the entirety of Book I, collected here for the first time in a single album. Many of the tracks are premiere recordings.
Nicolas Horvath has become noted for organizing concerts of unusual length, sometimes lasting over twelve hours, such as the performance of the complete piano music of Erik Satie at the Paris Philharmonie Boulez Hall before a cumulative audience of 14,000 people, and the complete piano music of Philip Glass. In October 2015, he gave the closing day concert in the Estonia Gallery at the Expo World Exhibition in Milan with a program of music by Jaan Rääts. In 2019, he was selected by Philip Glass himself to perform during the composer’s Philip Glass & Friends concert at the Paris Philharmonie.
Quiet Rhythms Book I was recorded in the France at La Fabrique des Rêves, June 8 – 14, 2020, Misy-sur-Yonne.
