SOCAN Foundation CD Programme (Canadian composers) for distribution to radio broadcasters worldwide
"HRH Princess Diana’s Ground" for the "Queen of Hearts" chosen as musical tribute
CBCTV Evening News, Canada, Sept. 2 1997
"The ‘Prestige Concert' with the soprano Nancy Argenta and the pianist Hendrik Bouman was the best event of the Mozart Festival of the Montreal Opera."
- Le Devoir, Montreal
“I play the copy [double CDs album - Little Notebook for Anna and Second Notebook for Anna for harpsicord and piano] over and over and I’m impressed each time.”
- CBC Television Canada Maritimes
Steve Andrusiak, Executive Producer
La musique, issue directement de l’héritage baroque, subit une transformation au paino; une technique plus ouverte de même que l’élargissement du spectre sonore du piano offrent au musicien toute unegamme de coloris émotionnels. Pour cet enregistrement, j’utilise des techniques propres aux jeux du clavecin et du pianoforte que j’ai adapté pour le piano moderne.
Hendrik Bouman
A Propos de ma musique pour piano “A Second Notebook for Anna”
Le “Second Notebook for Anna” qui est d’un certain point de vue, mon journal musical et donc, toujours en pleine croissance, contient une séries de compositions pour piano dans le gôut classique du 18è siècle.
Dans mon approche envers le piano je vise à maintenir l’esprit de fraîcheur et d’enthousiasme avec lequel les musiciens du 18ième siècle explorèrent ce nouveau-venu, qui, par la suite, allait graduellement supplanter le clavecin.
Solo Piano music composed in 18th Century style
A Second Notebook for Anna
My ‘contemporary Classical’ compositions, written in 18th Century style, are the fruit of my love and admiration for the magnificent musical universe of the 18th Century. As a performer specialised in Early Music, I increasingly felt it a challenge to experience what was for most of the Masters of the 17th and 18th Centures commonplace: to perform, alone or in an ensemble, one’s own works.
In 1993, helped by the impetus given by my beloved wife and muse Anna, I moved from improvising to composing in Baroque and Classical styles. Through a specialised performing career spanning three decades, I had come to master the historical musical language in the same manner as one acquires a foreign language, by living in the country, integrating the subtle accents and inflections, the gestures, the different tones, and implicit and explicit messages.
The process by which my familiarity with the historical idiom, both in the head as in the fingers, channeled my creativity back into the composition of music which had never existed before, gave me both much insight and pleasure.
Naturally, my earliest compositions were primarily intended for me to play on the harpsichord and the piano, and this recording offers a selection of those works which all show characteristics of the pre-classical and classical period.
In my approach to these piano compositions I have savoured something of that fresh and eager spirit with which musicians in the 18th Century explored the newcomer, the early piano, which was in many ways different from their familiar harpsichord, the keyboard instrument that had been around for three centuries. Music, still indebted to the Baroque tradition, was being transformed on the piano, and with new technical horizons and a widening sound spectrum, a rich variety of emotional colours presented itself to the performer-composer.
I chose to play on a modern Fazioli piano while yet paying tribute to an older keyboard tradition in employing tehciniques and means of expression derived directly from the harpsichord, clavichord and fortepiano.”
Hendrik Bouman
