Hugely excited that my new album on ECM Records, with pianist Blair McMillen, was released in May, with sonatas by Bartók and Schnittke and the Partita by Lutoslawski. I previously worked with ECM on Vijay Iyer’s album Mutations.

Album here

In choosing to record these works, I had a few personal motivations. Recently I learned that my great-grandparents – the immediate ancestors of my Viennese grandfather who I was close to as a child – had come from Slovakia and Bohemia. I have always been drawn to the colorations and characteristics of this music: the dark-hued tones and harmonies, the mordant wit, the detailed shaping of folk ornamentation. Knowing about my relatives just made me feel personally even closer to these pieces. The music of Bartók, Schnittke and Lutoslawski was also significant to my early musical development, particularly my affinity for contemporary music. Bartók was the first 20th-century composer whose music I was strongly attracted to. When I was 11, his First Rhapsody was my favorite piece and I went on to learn the rest of his pieces for violin – sonatas, concertos, solo sonata, and chamber music. I also encountered Lutoslawski’s music at 11 years old, as a student at the Aspen Festival. Playing in his Symphony No. 3, with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski conducting and Lutoslawski there in person, I was puzzled by the notation, with its odd-looking squiggles and arrows, but I loved the sound of the piece. I still remember it as one of my first thrilling experiences with recent music. As for Schnittke, I remember my excitement performing his “Quasi una sonata” at the Juilliard School when I was a student first learning about his work.