JAN HUGO VOŘÍŠEK (1791-1825)

COMPLETE WORKS FOR PIANO • 2

BILJANA URBAN, piano

“When I started recording Voříšek's complete piano works, I was very enthusiastic about his music; now that I have finished recording all three albums, I am ebullient. His unique musical language is marked by innovative harmonic thinking and reveals a composer who was ahead of his time. Infinite longing, the hallmark of Romanticism, appears discreetly in these works, probably deriving from the Czech pastoral féerie that imbues all Voříšek's music. This second album is admirably filled with dedications, shy confessions of desire, insouciance and pleasures. But it also takes us by surprise, making us laugh. Humour in music is a characteristic of the greatest masters.” - Biljana Urban

Listen to an extract from
Le désir, Op. 3

GP671

Jan Hugo Voříšek

About this Recording

This second volume devoted to the music of Bohemianborn Jan Hugo Voříšek charts his rapid compositional development from the early Stammbuchblatt and Impromptu in B flat to the tone-painting of the Rondos. With their incipient Romanticism, his character pieces share something of Schubert’s harmonic ideas and suggest why Voříšek should be seen as a leading Viennese composer of the first quarter of the nineteenth-century.

1) Theme and Variations IN B FLAT MAJOR, OP. 19
     (1822) (10:46)

2 RONDOS, OP. 18 (1824)
2) No. 1 in C Major (02:26)
3) No. 2 in G Major (02:26)

4) Le Désir, Op. 3 (1819) (12:50)

5) Le Plaisir, Op. 4 (1819) (08:09)

6) ECLOGUE IN C (1824) (08:54)

7) Impromptu in F Major (1824) 07:37)

8) Impromptu in B Flat Major (1817) (03:03)

9) Stammbuchblatt in A Major (1817) (01:28)

TOTAL TIME: 57:37

BILJANA URBAN

Biljana Urban received her Ph.D. in Music (Piano Performance) summa cum laude from the Academy of Music in Zagreb. She went on to study at the École Normale de Musique in Paris, settling in the city in 1983. Since 1991 she has been based in Amsterdam and has Dutch nationality.

She has performed in renowned international concert halls, including the Fresno Concert Hall, California for the Philip Lorentz Memorial concert series. She has taken part in international music festivals, including the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, the Festival of Flanders and the Orlando Festival in The Netherlands. As a chamber musician she has performed with soloists of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Monnaie Orchestra, Brussels, and the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. Her recitals have been broadcast by France Musique, Radio 4 in The Netherlands, Radio Klara in Belgium, by radio and television companies in Croatia and Slovenia, and by Valley Public Radio in the United States.

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