Name

Jonathan Powell - Topic

Description

Jonathan Powell was a British pianist, musicologist, music editor and self-taught composer. He wrote piano sonatas and string quartets, among other chamber music. As a player and musicologist, he focused on music from Russia and Eastern Europe around 1900, such as Alexander Scriabin, whose biography he contributed to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. He recorded rarely played music from the period, piano solo works by Georgi Conus, Konstantin Eiges, Alexander Goldenweiser, Egon Kornauth, Joseph Marx and Leonid Sabaneyev, among others, and piano concertos by Hans Winterberg and Xaver Scharwenka.
Powell lectured and played concerts regularly at Oxford University, and taught at institutions in Europe and the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. He was known for tackling the music by Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, including the eight-hour Sequentia cyclica, which he premiered in 2010 and released to critical acclaim in 2020. A reviewer noted that "the pianist’s intelligent, fluid pacing and astute scaling of dynamics address Sorabji’s architectural ambitions seriously".

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