Miroslav Beinhauer - Alois Haba: The Complete Piano Works - Miroslav [CD]

Alois Haba has gone down in the history of 20th-century music asan experimenter. He studied in Vienna and Berlin under Franz Schreker,studied the tonal principles of non-European music, and developed hisown theory of micro-intervallic music. However, his enthusiasm formicrotonal music narrowed the perception of his creative legacy solelyto it's experimental component, although more than half of his works arecompositions in the usual system of semitones. As he himself said, he wastrying "to find the path from non-traditional training to artisticallyindependent creative work with strongly altered harmony and melody inorder to arrive at a personal means of expression following the line leadingfrom Bach to Schumann and on to Reger." He achieved this goal inthe Sonata, Op. 3, for which he received much praise from Schreker, whileVitezslav Novak "with condescending humour called it a 'sonata for threehands'". Erwin Schulhoff premiered the Two Grotesque Pieces in 1922 inBerlin alongside compositions by Satie, Casella, and Stravinsky, andaccording to a critic, "Haba's compositions made a far more authenticimpression than much that surrounded them." After the Toccata quasiuna fantasia (1931), Haba returned to writing piano music one last time40 years later at the end of his life with his Six Moods. As a student inVienna and Ghent, the pianist Miroslav Beinhauer focused on music ofthe 20th and 21st centuries. He was introduced to Haba through hiscompositions for sixth-tone harmonium (Beinhauer is the only player ofthis instrument, created by Haba), and he went on to study Haba's completeworks for "ordinary" piano as well. These works are little known and worthyof attention.The first complete recording of Haba's works for "ordinary" piano.Haba surprisingly without micro-intervals