Nyman: Piano Music (BioVinyl)

An audiophile-grade LP transfer for one of Jeroen van Veen’s top-selling albums of minimalist piano music.

Over the last 50 years, Michael Nyman (b1944) has bewitched and entranced audiences and film-goers with his unique brand of English-accented minimalism. After the likes of Reich and Glass began to rebel against serial orthodoxy during the 1960s, Nyman was one of the first composers outside the US to pick up the trend and run with it. In fact he coined the term ‘minimalism’ – in this sense, he could be classed as the origin of the most influential style in classical music over the course of the last half-century.

Nyman’s own soundworld is often distinctively marked by saxophones, and defined in the popular imagination by his enduring creative partnership with the film director Peter Greenaway. Nyman’s soundtracks for The Draughtsman's Contract, A Zed and Two Noughts, Drowning By Numbers took on a life of their own, before his contribution to Jane Campion’s movie The Piano propelled him to lasting international fame.

The pulsing, neo-Baroque but expressively ambivalent energy of ‘Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds’, from The Draughtman’s Contract, forms the fitting climax to Jeroen van Veen’s compilation of Nyman’s work, as transcribed for solo piano.

On many albums for Brilliant Classics, from Glass and Pärt to Yann Beuron and his own music, Jeroen van Veen has established himself as the pre-eminent authority in this genre. To quote one of many critical authorities: ‘Jeroen van Veen's recording can stand alongside the best from any source, and this [Arvo Pärt] set is worthy of high praise in every regard.’

Van Veen’s choice of repertoire for this compilation encompasses some of Nyman’s best-known tracks, such as excerpts from The Piano. It also ventures into less familiar territory, such as the composer’s soundtrack to the early Russian silent classic of the cinema, Man with a Movie Camera. This LP transfer of the original 2015 album is accompanied by full sleeve notes.

The LP version of a successful recording from the Brilliant Classics back-catalogue: Piano Music by Michael Nyman.
Michael Nyman (born 1944) is one of the most famous and successful film music composers of our time. His music, although inextricably connected with the visual action of a film, has the quality to stand on its own, to evoke and express the visual emotions in sounds only.
Nyman’s most famous film score is of the film “The Piano”, becoming an instant hit. Its openness and its deceptively simple musical lines appealed to a mass audience.
The music featured on this recording is either originally written for piano or arranged by the composer himself.
Minimal Music champion Jeroen van Veen has been fascinated by Nyman’s music his whole life, and the recording of it was a logical step. He is the ideal interpreter of this seductive, mind opening music.