Kathryn Stott writes: ‘This year is very much a celebration for me – a fiftieth birthday and thirty years on the concert platform!

When Ralph Couzens and I started to discuss plans for a solo CD, I was very keen to record repertoire which would reflect my wide taste in music from around the world. The subject ‘dance’ was in my head from the start and so here we have a musical journey encompassing South American countries, Romanian and Hungarian folk music, and dances from the Polish Mazurka to the Russian Polka, via Finland, France and Spain, to name but a few!

Piazzolla sits alongside Satie as do Sibelius and Albéniz… dances both joyous and sad. I’m particularly excited to include the world premiere of Old Style, a birthday present from one of my favourite British composers, Graham Fitkin.’

South American music is a great love of Stott’s and so the inclusion of Villa-Lobos, Piazzolla, Ginastera, Guarnieri and Lecuona was essential: ‘Valsa da dor I find both touching and passionate, whereas Ginastera’s Danza has a distant sadness, which is almost untouchable.’ Stott has previously worked with the members of Piazzolla’s original Quintet, and has remained an avid fan ever since. Here she performs Milonga del ángel, a work that recreates the haunting sound of the bandoneón.

This eclectic repertoire of dances is completed by the premiere of Old Style by Graham Fitkin, written for Kathryn Stott in celebration of her landmark anniversaries this year: ‘For the past ten years, Graham has been writing the most fantastic music for me – always challenging but with such a fantastic energy. This piece is no exception and I feel its inclusion is an important part of this international and rather special journey.’

Calum macDonald’s notes are absolutely ideal, neatly drawing together all the various threads, and the quality of the Chandos recording can’t be faulted. Trulty ‘one of Britain’s most versatile and imaginative musicnas’, Stott crowns an astonishing array of recent releases… with this highly imaginative programme. This is a must for all pianists and lovers of dance.
The very programme of this rich and fabulously eclectic recital shows not only that Kathryn Stott has very side-ranging sympathies but that she is a musician who knows how to enjoy herself, an how to elicit similar feelings in others, both those who work with here and those who simply have the good fortune to hear her play… normally such a recital would be best listened to over two or three sessions, for maximum freshness. This one can be heard at a sitting. More importantly, it can be listened to
Kathryn Stott’s enjoyable and warmly recorded recital of dance pieces has a Latin-American bias, an idiom for which she has an evident empathy. Stott shapes the sultry rhythms and sensuous harmonies with allure and velvety touch, the latter quality also very much to the fore in Albéniz’s much-loved tango
Calum MacDonald’s notes are absolutely ideal, neatly drawing together all the various threads, and the quality of the Chandos recording can’t be faulted. Truly ‘one of Britain’s most versatile and imaginative musicians’, Stott crowns an astonishing array of recent releases… with this highly imaginative programme. This is a must for all pianists and lovers of dance
What a delight
She clicks her heels in the South American music like a native and is equally ravishing in her Spanish dances… truly enjoyable release from probably the most suave of all female British pianists.

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