Halo: Music for Piano

Pianist Andrew Matthews-Owen performs his album of atmospheric contemporary works for piano beautifully. Joseph Phibbs’ shimmering Preludes inhabit the ethereal soundworlds of Ravel and Messiaen, while Dobrinka Tabakova’s suite of pieces exploring modal scales has a folk flavour, both in its harmonic language and joyful dance rhythms—“Phrygian” is an exotic whirlwind of sound that seems almost ancient. Hannah Kendall’s “On the Chequer’d Field Array’d” is a fascinating musical commentary on an 18th-century poem about the intellectual challenges of chess strategy. And the album’s title work, Tabakova’s “Halo”, is a mesmerising journey from darkness to light.