In a first in a series of concerts to be presented throughout 2021, Piano Music by Beethoven, Burgess, Debussy and Ravel features Anthony Burgess’s music for solo piano, played on Burgess’s own Bösendorfer by Richard Casey.
The concert will stream on YouTube and Facebook at 7pm GMT this Thursday 21 January, and will be free to view.
Richard Casey is based in Manchester and has recorded the collected solo piano works of Camden Reeves, Anthony Gilbert (with piano duo partner Ian Buckle), and Peter Maxwell Davies, as well as Edward Cowie’s epic Rutherford’s Lights and Ed Hughes’ Orchids. Richard has also recorded the The Piano Music of of Anthony Burgess for the Divine Art label.
He has played many of Burgess’s chamber works with the ensemble Psappha including the world premiere of his Sonata in G Minor for Violoncello and Piano and his dramatic adaptation of The Waste Land.
Richard says: ‘It is a great privilege to perform some of Anthony Burgess’s piano works. Such clear-sighted economy, fresh and direct, from one of Britain’s most talented composers who, in his words, had the terrible misfortune to be better known as a novelist! A great clockwork contrapuntalist who claimed to write a fugue every day before breakfast. I have put his music with that of three of the composers that inspired him, Beethoven, Debussy and Ravel.’
