An English Treat

An English Treat; featuring internationally recognized fortepianist/clavichordist Susan Alexander-Max, playing the NMM's grand piano by Anton Martin Thym, Vienna, ca. 1815. Specializing in the music of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Susan has performed, recorded, and taught extensively throughout the US, the UK, the Far East, and Europe, to outstanding critical acclaim.

She is a splendid pianist who employs an uncommon variety of touch and articulation, perfectly calibrated for the late 18th-century style. Best of all, Alexander-Max is blessed with a vivid imagination, lavishly applied toward a realm of expressive ends. - Patrick Rucker, Fanfare, USA.

She plays with the restraint demanded by such a delicate and complex mechanical action, and the sound is charming – warm and plumy in the middle and lower range, more sparkling on top. The upper register can become swamped by the riches of lower down in the loud passages – a characteristic of the instrument itself as much as of the recording – but the quiet contrasts are wholly endearing. A most imaginative combination of music and instrument, both revealed as far more than mere curiosities. - BBC Music Magazine*****.

On this disc, pianist Susan Alexander-Max offers four suites by Zipoli. Her performances of the composer's graceful melodies and idiomatic keyboard writing are sensitive and stylistic. The effect is greatly enhanced by her decision to use the 1720 Cristofori piano from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This instrument, with its light action and silvery tone, is ideal for this repertoire and is exactly the type of piano Zipoli would have known. - Mark Kroll, WBUR Public Arts Journal, Boston, USA.

...Alexander-Max's stately fortepiano entry revealed the inner heart of the movement's song - and then its fantasy. - Hilary Finch, The Times.