February 2021 Playlist
“MUSIC IS WHAT FEELINGS SOUND LIKE”
This month's playlist is a homage to Bartolomeo Cristofori's wonderful invention un cimbalo di cipresso di piano e forte, or as we now call it; the piano.
I have selected some of the most beautiful and evocative new piano pieces by current composers and interspersed them with works from throughout the ages by the composers who have inspired them.
It makes for a diverse array of pieces but I hope that you can hear the common threads and the evolutions of sound that tie them together.
There are several composers who are making their debuts on AYANE this month; keep an ear out for the beautiful pieces by Eydís Evensen and Nahre Sol inparticular. I found Eydís’ music down a Spotify rabbit hole and loved it from the first couple of bars. Nahre Sol’s music came to my attention through her brilliant YouTube channel, where she talks about everything from piano and practice technique through music history and how she creates her own music, I highly recommend checking it out if any of these things interest you, I promise you will learn many useful things.
This playlist required many edits, it was extremely long at one point as there are so many incredible pieces to choose from. It was a really difficult job to whittle it down to size! I will definitely revisit this theme and turn it into a series.
I compiled this playlist while I've been working on various projects and it is a really lovely one to listen to if you need to focus. I've chosen the pieces with the intention of creating a calm and peaceful atmosphere. As such it is also lovely to drop off to sleep with, I can report some of the best night's sleep I've had in a while since I started listening to this as my lullaby reel.
If you are interested to know more about the history of the piano’s development you might be interested in this post. Being the music nerd that I am and someone who is fascinated by how things work, I Googled ‘the history of the piano’ while I was creating this playlist. I ended up down a bit of a research rabbit hole, but it was really interesting to learn about how and why the piano has evolved the way it has (and continues to do so). So I decided to write a short article about it, in case anyone else was interested too.
I’d love to know what your favourite piano work is - I’ll add any popular ones I’ve missed to the playlist!
If you would prefer to listen to this playlist in the Spotify app, please hit the button below.
