Time Traveler's Suite (2021)

The Time Traveler's Suite offered in this ambitious recital by pianist Inon Barnatan is not a Baroque suite in the strictest sense. Only a few of the pieces feature the French dance rhythms that make up that form, yet the Time Traveler's Suite is indeed a suite of a sort. One might call it a meta-suite, collecting short pieces that each reveal some new aspect of a coherent set that runs from the Baroque to the contemporary era and starts back again. Instead of dance rhythms, Barnatan finds pieces that are contrapuntally ... Read More

The Time Traveler's Suite offered in this ambitious recital by pianist Inon Barnatan is not a Baroque suite in the strictest sense. Only a few of the pieces feature the French dance rhythms that make up that form, yet the Time Traveler's Suite is indeed a suite of a sort. One might call it a meta-suite, collecting short pieces that each reveal some new aspect of a coherent set that runs from the Baroque to the contemporary era and starts back again. Instead of dance rhythms, Barnatan finds pieces that are contrapuntally intricate. His program is masterfully constructed, laying out several Baroque structures and then pivoting to modern times with the Rigaudon from Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin and then exploring the ultimate ramifications of classical polyphony in music by Ligeti and Barber (at his most modernist extreme). The Variations and fugue on a theme by Handel, Op. 24, of Brahms both sum up the whole program and provide, in the final fugue, closure to the process that was set in motion by... Read Less