Until the appearance of Pro Piano's Godowsky: Java Suite featuring pianist Esther Budiardjo, one of the great gaping holes in the recorded repertoire had been Leopold Godowsky's mammoth and valedictory Java Suite, composed in the mid-'20s. Godowsky enjoys one of the most titanic reputations in the history of pianism, yet his recordings and piano rolls leave a strangely uneven and mixed impression of his artistry. Godowsky's compositional output is dominated by transcriptions of various kinds, and some of them -- for example ...
Read More
Until the appearance of Pro Piano's Godowsky: Java Suite featuring pianist Esther Budiardjo, one of the great gaping holes in the recorded repertoire had been Leopold Godowsky's mammoth and valedictory Java Suite, composed in the mid-'20s. Godowsky enjoys one of the most titanic reputations in the history of pianism, yet his recordings and piano rolls leave a strangely uneven and mixed impression of his artistry. Godowsky's compositional output is dominated by transcriptions of various kinds, and some of them -- for example, his transcriptions that superimpose one Chopin etude on top of another -- are so complex and difficult as to inspire bewilderment rather than awe. The Java Suite is also sometimes mistakenly regarded as a transcription of Indonesian music, which it is not; it is more like Godowsky's equivalent of Albéniz's Iberia, a large cycle of 14 piano pieces that categorize the extent of both his fertile imagination and technical resources. One of the reasons artists have been slow to record...
Read Less
Add this copy of Java Suite to cart. $79.45, good condition, Sold by Zoom Books Company rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Lynden, WA, UNITED STATES, published 2011 by Pro Piano.