various: piano music of the near east

Modern Silence present a reissue of Piano Music Of The Near East, originally released in 1963. This stunning 20th-century piano music was inspired by national traditions but uses the language and form of Western music. Features pieces by: Manolis Kalomiri, Paul Ben-Haim, Ilhan Mimaroglu, Andre Amine Hossein, Anis Fuleihan, and Amiran Rigai. All works played on piano by Amiran Rigai. From the original liner notes: "In the countries of the Near East, as in any other country where occidental culture is adoptive, musical composition modeled after its occidental counterpart came into being out of an intellectual necessity: that of finding a substitute for a traditional music which, under the dictate of its very essence, resisted evolution and was consequently in decay. It was logical, as far as both the ideals and the basic methods of this process of substitution were concerned, that the fashioning be done after the examples of the national schools of the late nineteenth-century Europe. The first stream of the westernized near eastern music was therefore romantic (or post-romantic, or impressionist) in its overall gesture. Regardless of the composition date of each individual opus, all of the works recorded here fall into this category: music inspired by national traditions (musical, or other), displaying at least that intangible called 'national character' whenever a national element is not evident, but employing a language and a medium belonging to western music (...)"