About us / Contact

The Classical Music Network

CD

Europe : Paris, Londn, Zurich, Geneva, Strasbourg, Bruxelles, Gent
America : New York, San Francisco, Montreal                       WORLD


Newsletter
Your email :

 

Back

10/06/2011
A Steinway Christmas Album: Christmas carols & winter melodies by various composers
Jeffrey Biegel (piano)
Recorded at SUNY Purchase (May 3, 4, 2011) – 62’41
Steinway & Sons Ref. #: 34062 30005 – Liner notes in English





A Steinway Christmas Album features twenty-one sparkling arrangements of time honored carols, well-loved winter melodies, and evocative new pieces. The initial CD release is a limited-edition package that includes a collectible Steinway Lyre Christmas tree ornament.


Opening with the very merry Christmas favorite Sleigh Ride, pianist Jeffrey Biegel and Grammy® Award winning producer Stephen Epstein take listeners on a journey through Christmases past and present, with selection running the gamut from 16th-century folk songs to soulful modern-day tunes. Christmas is A-Comin’, a jazzy take on a 1953 Frank Luther song, has his roots in an old English round.


Quiet Night, written specifically for Biegel, combines the treasured Away in a Manger and Silent Night into a melodic, haunting composition. With excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker and The Seasons, Max Reger’s op. 17 Weinachtstraum, Franz Liszt’s The Sheperds at the Manger, and a waltz from a Russian fantasy opera by Vladimir Rebikov Yolka, this album perfectly captures the spirit of the season.


Biegel’s own arrangement of David Foster’s touching Grown-Up Christmas List, made famous by Natalie Cole (among others), evokes the song’s hopefulness for peace and love at Christmastime.


This recording stands above the rest of the holiday musical offerings because of its rarity. While there are thousands of Christmas recordings available, no more than a dozen feature solo piano.


Talented pianist Jeffrey Biegel makes a clear demonstration that the instrument is an incomparable medium for conveying the merriment, magic, and mystery of the season.


Elegantly packaged in a festive jewel-box, this album highly deserves a place on your Christmas list.


Christian Dalzon

 

 

 

Copyright ©ConcertoNet.com