GYÖRGY SZABADOS (b.1939): Bells, Pilgrimage, Message, Aracs, The Land of Boldogasszony, Supplication.

Description: With a career spanning improvised contemporary music, overlapping with contemporary jazz, Szabados writes music which is eloquent and communicative, free and rhapsodic, and scenically evocative. These pieces present a succession of sound images - bells are ubiquitous - over undulating accompanimental figures and free-flowing textures of no great harmonic complexity but great rhythmic variety. Sometimes the composer's jazz background is apparent in the use of jazz chords, for example in 'Message'; for the most part the music does not sound especially 'jazzy', though a certain 'new age' sensibility can be detected, as well as earlier antecedents in impressionism and Hungarian folk music, especially the great flexibility of melodic lines and freedom from strict meter. György Szabados (piano).