Roy AGNEW: Piano Music
Roy Agnew (1891–1944) – one of few early-twentieth-century Australian composers to gain international success – wove many external influences into a warmly Romantic personal style of striking variety and wide appeal, and his compositions, largely for the piano, are startlingly virtuosic, harmonically daring and charmingly sentimental by turn. Beautifully written by a natural pianist for his own instrument, they often recall the virtuosic textures of Liszt and Skryabin and occasionally show flashes of the Impressionist colours of Debussy.
Stephanie McCallum, piano
Listen To This Recording:
- Rhapsody (1928)*
- Toccata (1933)
- I: Whither
- II: Exaltation
- I
- II
- III
- A Dance Impression (1927)*
- Drifting Mists (1931)
- Sonata (1929)
- Etude (1924)*
- I
- II
- III
- Sonata Poème (1929, completed 1935)
- I The Falling Snow
- II A Quest
- III The Happy Lad
- Elf Dance: Etude (1928)*
- A May Day (1927)*
- No. 1 Gnome Dance
- No. 2 When Evening Shadows Fall
- No. 3 Forest Nymphs at Play
- No. 4 Night in the Forest
- No. 5 By a Quiet Stream
- No. 6 The Forest Grandeur
Two Pieces for Piano (1931)*
Three Preludes (1927)*
Three Poems (1927)*
Three Lyrics (1927)*
Australian Forest Pieces (1913)*
*FIRST RECORDING
MusicWeb International :
‘McCallum is a vibrant and sensitive exponent of Agnew’s music, never inflating it, but drawing its profile with poetic discretion.’
—Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International