Many thanks to Michael Johnson for the nice review of my new album The Richter Scale!
EXTRACTS:
The most ambitious application yet of Steinway’s new digital piano, Spirio/r, delivers stunning levels of sound and color in the new CD release of The Richter Scale, an hour-long keyboard drama written by the well-known German composer and pianist Boris Bergmann.
For the first time, the Spirio has been configured on a Steinway D grand to enable four-hand pieces to be played by two hands. The second score is first recorded in playback mode then combined with the live primo part. Liu is the live player who has to coordinate and fuse the two.
I took Bergmann’s advice and listened to the full composition from start to finish to best feel the gathering emotional turbulence. I was gripped by the melodies, harmonies, rhythms and percussive explosions along the way.