MALCOLM LIPKIN (1932–2017): Piano Music : Nocturnes Nos. 1 - 8 (1987 – 2006), Sonata No. 5 (1986), Sonata No. 6 Fantasy Sonata (2002). Nathan Williamson, piano

Description: Malcolm Lipkin's experience and skill as an executant who can perform his own music is evident in each of his piano scores. This is intrinsically piano music, devised specifically for hands at a keyboard. Often hypnotic and brooding, it beckons the listener in to an ethereal, uncanny soundscape. At other times, the material is brilliant and challenging, demanding from the player a formidable technique. Perhaps the most notable aspect of Lipkin’s writing for piano is its basic integrity. If, at a certain point as the music unfolds, the composer decides that an unvarying series of repeated notes or chords or arpeggiated figures is required for several bars then that is, unashamedly and irrefutably, what he sets down on the stave. This preoccupation with the fundamentals of piano writing is part of the very fabric of the material – shrewd, incisive and intuitive. Nathan Williamson, piano