Voříšek: Complete Works for Piano, Vol. 2 Biljana Urban

• Jan Václav Hugo Voříšek (1791-1825)
• 1 Theme and Variations in B-Flat Major, Op. 19 10:46
• 2 2 Rondos, Op. 18 - No. 1 in C Major 02:26
• 3 2 Rondos, Op. 18 - No. 2 in G Major 02:26
• 4 Le Desir, Op. 3 12:50
• 5 Le Plaisir, Op. 4 08:09
• 6 Eclogue in C Major 08:54
• 7 Impromptu in F Major 07:37
• 8 Impromptu in B-Flat Major 03:03
• 9 Stammbuchblatt in A Major 01:28
• Total Runtime 57:39

Info for Voříšek: Complete Works for Piano, Vol. 2

This second volume devoted to the music of Bohemian-born Jan Hugo Voříšek charts his rapid compositional development from the early Stammbuchblatt and Impromptu in B flat to the tone-painting of the Rondos. With their incipient Romanticism, his character pieces share something of Schubert’s harmonic ideas and suggest why Voříšek should be seen as a leading Viennese composer of the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

„Roughly contemporary to Schubert, having been born in 1791, and writing in a similar mode, the Bohemian composer Jan Hugo Voříšek, lived just 34 years. He was to leave little by which his name would live on, having been torn between a desire to compose and the financial safety of a position in the Austrian civil service. Indeed what we do have was largely composed in the final six years of his frail life, and too late for him to promote them on the concert platform. From the beginning of that period we have a brief and charming Stammbuchblatt, and the flight of mercurial fantasy in the B flat major Impromptu. Whither he was directing his steps comes in the more substantial Impromptu in F major, a score that would have been well regarded had it been from the young Beethoven. From the same year came Eclogue, where Voříšek found some memorable thematic material, its lack having dogged his innate workmanship in so many of his earlier scores. That he would have offered much had his life been spared comes in the pair of character pieces, Le Desir and Le Plasir, which together total over twenty minutes, and show that he had grasped the dawn of the Romantic era that would be seen through Chopin’s eyes. If he has captured our attention in the first of the two pieces, the mercurial delights of Le Plasir are charming. The whole disc of a rather of uneven quality, but we have to thank the Yugoslav-born soloist, Biljana Urban, for bringing it to our attention, the pages of right hand tracery dispatched with admirable clarity, and I look forward to her future volumes.“ (David Denton, David’s Review Corner)

Biljana Urban,piano

Biljana Urban
received her Ph.D. in Music (Piano Performance) summa cum laude from the Academy of Music in Zagreb. She went on to study at the École Normale de Musique in Paris, settling in the city in 1983. Since 1991 she has been based in Amsterdam and has Dutch nationality.

She has performed in renowned international concert halls, including the Fresno Concert Hall, California for the Philip Lorentz Memorial concert series. She has taken part in international music festivals, including the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, the Festival of Flanders and the Orlando Festival in The Netherlands. As a chamber musician she has performed with soloists of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Monnaie Orchestra, Brussels, and the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. Her recitals have been broadcast by France Musique, Radio 4 in The Netherlands, Radio Klara in Belgium, by radio and television companies in Croatia and Slovenia, and by Valley Public Radio in the United States.

She has taught in Paris at the École Supérieure César Franck and the Conservatoire de Neuilly, and was artist-in-residence at California State University in Fresno in 2012; the following year she was appointed associate professor at the University of Arts in Osijek, Croatia.

In 2010 Biljana Urban released an acclaimed recording on Naxos [9.70120] of the piano works of her grandfather Jan Urban. The first album of her Voříšek Complete Works for Piano, released in September 2014 on the Grand Piano label, was recognised as one of the best albums of the year by Culture Catch.

Booklet for Voříšek: Complete Works for Piano, Vol. 2