Ursula Oppens is an ideal interpreter of Corigliano, with the delicate sensitivity and fearless assurance to meet his music’s wide-ranging demands. Oppens’ interpretation maintains a wonderful sense of fantasy, while rising to the demands…that never become strenuous technical exercises.

Pianist and pedagogue Jerome Lowenthal joins Oppens in works for two pianos…in the early Fantasia (1959) Corigliano emerges as an Ivesian proto-Magic Realist, already with his own remarkable technique and colour-palette well established. © The WholeNote Read complete review

Çedille’s new CD of Corigliano’s piano music was an exciting discovery. Ranging from the 1959 romp for two pianos called Kaleidoscope, and the unsettled and poignant quarter-tone Chiaroscuro, to the premiere recording of the 2008 Winging It, three improvisations created for the brilliant Ursula Oppens, it shows the composer to be as adept at fashioning colorful, moving scores for keyboard as for large ensembles.

…a fascinating combination of tonal and atonal piano writing, clearly the product of an inventive musical mind.

…Ursula Oppens really whips it off in unbelievable fashion. Both pianists (Jerome Lowenthal joins Oppens in the two-piano works) are world-renowned, and certainly live up to their reputations in this CD.

This splendid disc should appeal to (1) fans of John Corigliano’s music; (2) lovers of contemporary piano music; (3) aficionados of Oppens and/or Lowenthal; (4) just about everyone else. If you find yourself in one of those groups, by all means pick this disc up at your first opportunity.

It shows off Corigliano’s wonderful sense of color and sonority and his overall sense of the dramatic in terms of building a larger work out of smaller ones. It is a wonderful composition that should be heard and programmed more often than it is…this fabulous recital will inspire the performance of more of this music. We could ask for nothing more.

A desirable disc of Corigliano’s communicative piano music

John Corigliano’s relatively small yet deeply rewarding piano output is skillfully wrought, thoroughly idiomatic, inventive and communicative on every level, and it is not surprising that these works have found favour with pianists and audiences alike. Moreover, the music’s variety of mood, conception and time scale add up to a well-contrasted one-hour programme that, for whatever it’s worth in the age of digital downloads, ideally suits the compact-disc format.

La generosa discografia de John Corigliano se amplia con un registro monografico dedicado a su musica para piano. Despues de haber escuchado algunas de sus grandilocuentes partituras recientes—como ese Circus Maximus que Naxos editara hace unos meses—enfrentarse a las dimensiones de su escritura para instrumento solista resulta mas gratificante. Y quiza doblemente gratificante porque ninguna de las cinco piezas que lo componen tienen ninguna ambicion de afirmarse como una obra magna. Y asi la musica de Corigliano fluye con mayor naturalidad que la casi impostada voz de otras creaciones. De las curiosas improvisaciones transcritas y reelaboradas que conforman Winging it al dialogo de los dos pianos, afinados a una distancia de cuarto de tono, de Chiaroscuro, donde los ecos vanguardistas de Ives o Cowell se declina desde una optica biensonante, pasando por el peculiar minimalismo de Fantasia on an Ostinato, el juvenil e impetuoso Kaleidoscope y la exploracion tecnica que propone el Etude Fantasy, el piano de Corigliano fluye sin renunciar a su memoria sonora, con naturalidad limpida, aun mas nitida en la soberbia recreacion de Ursula Oppens.

While the title of the CD might be Winging It, Ursula Oppens has clearly spent much time honing her craft as a brilliant performer of new music: here, the music of John Corigliano. This combination is an excellent match, and it makes for an exciting album. The crashing beginning of the title track is incredibly dynamic, and Oppens shows her fire, yet it gives way to quiet shortly after. Even during the melancholy, reflective second movement, Oppens is energized and plays brightly (with a bright recording quality to complement her playing). The final movement is a jazz-like chase between hands, with some interesting chords for good measure. Brief but absolutely novel, Chiarascuro for two pianos (with Jerome Lowenthal) demonstrates Corigliano’s innovative nature as a composer. It is fascinating to hear the quarter-tuned piano echo the regular one, be it in the distorted images in “Light” or in “Shadows.” It is a very impressionistic piece; that is, one gets impressions of moments that create moods, rather than a linear narrative throughout the work. Most surprising is a choral passage in the piece that establishes a vague sense of tonality for a moment. The quasi-minimalist Fantasia is more than mere repetition, for Oppens carefully phrases the repetitive patterns with care and tenderness. While the listener might be tempted to think Corigliano is all art music and novelty, he or she is greeted with a hint of ragtime here and there in the Kaleidoscope for two pianos. The album concludes with the moody Etude Fantasy, which explores a variety of emotions. Any skeptics of new music should give this album a try, for Corigliano has written fairly accessible work. Both Oppens and Corigliano are extremely skilled at shifting gears, and rapidly, and this makes the album quite an energizing experience for the listener.