PAUL CRESTON: Piano Music
(2023)
Toccata Classics 0674
“Silberstein does the music a great service with heartfelt and impeccable playing.”
“Silberstein is equal to, indeed has a mastery over Creston’s demands, both technical and emotional.”
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“[Silberstein] plays Creston’s works with brilliance, imagination, and real presence.”
Paul Creston (1906-1985) was one of the most promising American composers of the mid-20th century. His First Symphony (1943) won the New York Music Critics’ Circle Prize, beating entries by Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, William Schuman, and Morton Gould. His orchestral music was programmed by conductors as significant as Arturo Toscanini and George Szell. The legendary piano virtuoso Earl Wild premiered Creston’s Piano Concerto. In the 1940s and 1950s, Creston was one of the most performed American composers both in the United States and Europe.
Today, Creston’s music is rarely performed, aside from the pieces he wrote for uncommon instruments such as the accordion and marimba. But Creston himself was a superb pianist, and his piano works balance their phenomenal technical demands and vibrant rhythmic complexity with exquisite expressive warmth. This disc of never-before recorded music pairs Creston’s monumental Three Narratives (1962) with the final four volumes of his Rhythmicon (1971-74).