Not having a musical vocabulary, I can only attempt to tell you why I love this curiously eclectic program of piano music. Not many collections will give you a selection of composers that range from C.P.E. Bach to John Cage. Mind you, Lubimov plays C.P.E. Bach in a style which illuminates the similarities between these two brilliant composers born two hundred years apart. Lubimov slows the music down and gets into the spaces between the notes. If you haven't heard Cage's In A Landscape before, you are in for a major treat. I had heard the Debussy Elegie before, of course, but I have never heard it like this. It is also wonderful to hear Silvestrov, an unjustly neglected contemporary composer, played so well. My advice is to set the scene carefully before you play the music. It should be quiet, no distractions, perhaps early evening. Some candles, a calm housecat bathing itself on a cushion, and a swallow of cognac or red wine would also help create a felicitous atmosphere. Each note on this CD counts. Somehow this music gives life a perspective. It puts cares, worries and compulsions in their proper place. It helps you realise that there is much more to living than the mundane. Who needs drugs when you can experience wonderful music like this?
