Stephanie McCallum
Stephanie McCallum brings formidable technique and real character to Alkan’s transcendental études and to the sharp edges of Boulez, Xenakis and Australian new music. Thunderous drama sits beside poised colour and clarity.
She has made the major-key and minor-key Alkan study cycles her ground: millions of notes, programme drama, funeral marches and octave storms served with control rather than blur. The Symphony drawn from Op. 39 sits beside the slightly mad Chanson de la folle and the first recording of Magnard’s Promenades, Parisian character pieces given room to breathe. On Notations she sets Boulez’s twelve miniatures and Xenakis’s Herma beside Henderson, Butterley, Dench, Sutherland and Humble, bringing light into dense modern writing without sanding off its bite. Chamber work with austraLYSIS and colleagues keeps the same appetite for risk. Whether the score is nineteenth-century French virtuosity or hard contemporary piano, the playing has elan, temperament and the stamina the music demands.
Stephanie McCallum appears on
Classical Allusion
Julian Yu takes famous pieces from the Western musical tradition and ornaments them in the manner of Chinese folk music.