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Alois Haba: The Complete Piano Works - Miroslav Beinhauer on CD

Alois Haba has gone down in the history of 20th-century music as

an experimenter. He studied in Vienna and Berlin under Franz Schreker,

studied the tonal principles of non-European music, and developed his

own theory of micro-intervallic music. However, his enthusiasm for

microtonal music narrowed the perception of his creative legacy solely

to it's experimental component, although more than half of his works are

compositions in the usual system of semitones. As he himself said, he was

trying "to find the path from non-traditional training to artistically

independent creative work with strongly altered harmony and melody in

order to arrive at a personal means of expression following the line leading

from Bach to Schumann and on to Reger." He achieved this goal in

the Sonata, Op. 3, for which he received much praise from Schreker, while

Vitezslav Novak "with condescending humour called it a 'sonata for three

hands'". Erwin Schulhoff premiered the Two Grotesque Pieces in 1922 in

Berlin alongside compositions by Satie, Casella, and Stravinsky, and

according to a critic, "Haba's compositions made a far more authentic

impression than much that surrounded them." After the Toccata quasi

una fantasia (1931), Haba returned to writing piano music one last time

40 years later at the end of his life with his Six Moods. As a student in

Vienna and Ghent, the pianist Miroslav Beinhauer focused on music of

the 20th and 21st centuries. He was introduced to Haba through his

compositions for sixth-tone harmonium (Beinhauer is the only player of

this instrument, created by Haba), and he went on to study Haba's complete

works for "ordinary" piano as well. These works are little known and worthy

of attention.

The first complete recording of Haba's works for "ordinary" piano.

Haba surprisingly without micro-intervals