Pianist Peter Jablonski’s new album on Ondine is focused on the piano works of Ronald Stevenson (1928–2015), a Scottish pianist, composer, thinker, writer, educator, and a committed pacifist. Best known for his monumental 80-minute-long Passacaglia on DSCH, a tribute to Shostakovich composed in 1962, this piano album features a selection of piano gems written between 1959 and 2002. Alongside Stevenson’s masterful Peter Grimes Fantasy, the album includes four world-première recordings touching but a corner of a rich and enormous tapestry of nearly 500 piano pieces written by the composer.

Stevenson’s musical interests were wide-ranging: since his college days, he studied counterpoint, and was interested in the music of Purcell and early masters. He also admired the grand virtuoso tradition of Chopin and Liszt, Medtner and Rachmaninov, Paderewski, Godowsky, Sorabji, and others. Not only did Stevenson study them all and played their works on the piano, but each of these figures found an honoured place in his musical temple. Many of Stevenson’s musical compositions are examples of intertwining complexities of his musical thought, melody, counterpoint, and harmony; he weaves his musical fabrics that preserve the wide gamut of his creative thinking.

Peter Jablonski is an internationally acclaimed Swedish pianist. Discovered by Claudio Abbado and Vladimir Ashkenazy and signed by Decca at the age of 17, he went on to perform, collaborate, and record with over 150 of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, including the Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Mariinsky, La Scala Philharmonic, Tonhalle Zurich, Orchestre Nationale de France, NHK Tokyo, DSO Berlin, Warsaw Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Valery Gergiev, Kurt Sanderling, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Riccardo Chailly, Daniele Gatti, and Myung-Whun Chung, to name a few. He has performed and recorded the complete piano concertos by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, and Bartók, and all the piano sonatas by Prokofiev. Hailed as an ‘unconventional virtuoso’, during his three-decade-long career he developed a diverse repertoire and worked with composers Witold Lutosławski and Arvo Pärt. Jablonski’s extensive discography includes several award-winning recordings.