Myron Silberstein: Piano Music, 2016-2022
(2026)
Toccata Classics 0786
I am not sure when I last enjoyed a recital of new piano music this much.
There’s plenty of energy … plenty of profundity. This is music of continuous intellectual interest, but emotion–from the cheeky to the lamenting, from the joyful to the desolate, from the jazzy to the stern–is what truly gives it its power and memorability.
This is music that is accessible, crreative, highly personal, and uplifting. And who better to perform it than the composer, a celebrated keyboard artist?
This is the first album devoted exclusively to my own compositions. Critic Mark Lehman has described my style as “somehow marrying Romantic impulses to harder-edged harmonies with cunning and imagination.”
I have paired my first five piano sonatas with piano cycles and standalone pieces. The rhythmically playful Four Impromptus begin the album with ingratiating warmth, which continues through my First Piano Sonata. The powerful, stormy Second Piano Sonata is paired with four delicate Winter Landscapes. A dramatic Prelude and Fugue comes between the energetic Third Piano Sonata and the celebratory Fourth Piano Sonata. Transformations, a set of variations on a gentle, sultry melody, follows. My Fifth Piano Sonata moves through moods of whimsy, bittersweetness, and invigorating rhythmic intensity. Jortunioca, a brief fantasy on Latin dance rhythms, finishes the album.
Audio samples
Piano Sonata No. 3 (excerpts)
Trasnformations (excerpts)
Piano Sonata No. 4 (excerpts)
behind the scenes
This is one of the takes for the finale to my Fourth Piano Sonata. You can see how the energy of the music practically jolts me off the bench! I recorded this on the second day of the sessions.
at klavierhaus
After the sessions were complete, I played a few favorite passages from the recording for my longtime friend and producer Walter Simmons and Klavierhaus’s superb sound engineer, James Wu.
You’ll hear James announce “Take 31” — but that’s not the 31st take of Transformations! We numbered each day’s takes consecutively so that there was no risk of making an error in my edit plan.