"stunningly performed by Clare Hammond" — Ivan Moody
The BIS Recording brings together some outstanding piano music by Panufnik senior, stunningly performed by Clare Hammond, and recent work by his daughter as well as a couple of ‘retrospective collaborations’, including a solo piano version of the Modlitwa heard on the Signum disc. Andrzej’s dazzling skill and imagination is immediately apparent in the wonderful Twelve Miniature Studies (1947, rev 1955/64) that opens the recital. Why this 20-minute set, full of invention, beauty and excitement, is not in the repertoire of more pianists is a mystery.
Hommage à Chopin is an arrangement by Roxanna of three of Andrzej’s five vocalises of that name for solo piano, and they are truly haunting, as is the transcription of Modlitwa. The late Pentasonata is relatively well known but a performance as vivacious and, at the same time, as attentive to detail as Hammond’s makes one listen to it as though for the first time - BIS’s superb production also plays a part in this.
Reflections, from 1968, is grittier but the musical and philosophical preoccupations are essentially the same, and Hammond is as convincing in the earlier style as in the later. Between these two works come Roxanna’s Second Home and Glo. The way Hammond plays the opening repeated notes of Second Home would alone be worth the price of the disc.