String Theory 15: Piano Trios, Quartets and Quintets, etc.

This two-CD set’s anchor is the big Piano Quintet, whose music went missing after initial performances. The autograph score was delivered anonymously to the Schnabel archive in 2001 and this is its first recording. At three movements spanning 55 minutes, it’s a monster.

Piano Factory 11.

Finnissy’s huge and nigh impenetrable opus suggests that music may comment only upon itself.

Neither Bad Boy nor Bum: New Recordings of Ornstein and Partch

Ornstein’s career as composer and pianist blossomed at a time when it seemed possible to express anything with music.