Earl: 75th Birthday Tribute

This album celebrates the 75th birthday of South African-born pianist and composer David Earl and contains "Oxymorons – 24 Preludes" (1993) and "Scenes from a South African Childhood" – 9 pieces for solo piano (2013). The second of these childhood pieces, "Princess Rainbow," is featured on the critically acclaimed release "African Pianism" by pianist Rebeca Omordia. David Earl was born in 1951 in Stellenbosch in South Africa's Western Cape. He made his professional piano debut at the age of 16 with the South African Broadcasting Corporation and, the following year, played Felix Mendelssohn's first piano concerto with the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra. At 19, he moved to London to study at the Trinity College of Music, where he also gave piano concerts, later including his own compositions. His extensive catalogue of works includes ballet scores, operas, chamber music, choral and vocal works, film music, a wide range of concertos for various instruments, as well as works for solo piano.

David Earl now teaches at the University of Cambridge. Before settling there, he spent seven years in Oxford. He describes "Oxymorons" as small tone poems that reflect friends and places he encountered during his time in Oxford. The title also refers to the paradoxical idea that he was composing tonal music at a time when this was not necessarily common. The nine pieces that make up "Scenes from a South African Childhood" are personal essays. David Earl grew up on the small estate "Old Nectar" in the Jonkershoek Valley north of Cape Town. The music evokes scenes of a young David walking through the gardens of Old Nectar with his mother; fly-fishing with his father in the river that flows through the valley; holidaying in Groot Drakenstein, where he discovered Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25, which remains inextricably linked to that place. Then the move to Cape Town, where the monuments, beaches, trees, and the warm Southern Hemisphere Christmases evoke their own nostalgia, which is expressed here through the music.