索拉布吉:100首鋼琴超技練習曲第84-100號 費德利克．烏仁 鋼琴 Fredrik Ullen / Sorabji – 100 Transcendental Studies, Nos 84–100

索拉布吉:100首鋼琴超技練習曲第84-100號 (探戈哈巴奈拉舞曲/稍慢板)
費德利克．烏仁 鋼琴獨奏


By far the largest collection of concert etudesin the known repertoire, Kaikhosru Sorabji's set of 100 Transcendental Studies, composed between 1940 and 1944, has a total duration of more than eight hours. On five previous discs, the Swedish pianist (and neuroscientist) Fredrik Ullen has introduced the first 83 etudes to a wider audience, the large majority of them appearing on disc for the first time. Now, 15 years after the release of the first volume comes the final instalment, a 2-disc set with the last 17 studies. In his own liner notes, Ullen describes the experience of learning and recording the collection: 'From the F sharp minor of Study 1 to the F sharp minor chord concluding Study 100: traversing Sorabji's Transcendental Studies has been somewhat like joining a comet following a long eccentric orbit through pianistic outer space, and finally returning back to mother earth.'

Most of the studies are typical concert etudesin the sense that they essentially explore a single technical or structural idea. But especially towards the end of the cycle Sorabji includes pieces that are on a much larger scale, a tendency that culminates with the two final etudes. Quasi fantasia (No. 99) is a hugely expanded elaboration of J. S. Bach's Chromatic Fantasia and is followed by the almost hour-long Coda-Finale, a quintuple fugue of staggering complexity. Besides the programme notes by Fredrik Ullen, the CD booklet includes texts by Kenneth Derus and Alistair Hinton who both knew the composer.