PETER SEABOURNE (b.1960): Steps, Vol. 4 - Libro di Canti Italiano.

Description: Seabourne started his monumental piano cycle Steps in 2001, and the ongoing work in progress now runs to five volumes, with more anticipated in the future. The short pieces in each set form a kind of personal diary or sketchbook for the composer, each volume exploring themes around a common subject. In the case of Volume 4 these are impressions of Italy - places, art, music, the sights and sounds of the street. Seabourne's style is a compendium of 20th-century styles, avoiding the avant-garde but including polyrhythms, polytonality (which runs the gamut from late-romantic chromaticism to, effectively, atonality) and a wide range of pianistic textures, though the grand Romantic tradition is notably rare. The pieces range from atmospheric to humorous, aphoristically suggestive to vividly descriptive, and the set as a whole contains much to delight listeners with a wide range of (reasonably, though not wildly, adventurous) tastes. Fabio Menchetti (piano).