Album review: Timo Andres & Metropolis Ensemble, Home Stretch (Nonesuch)

The centrepiece of this album by American pianist/composer Timo Andres is Mozart's “Piano Concerto No. 26 in D”, for which he provides the missing left-hand piano parts and cadenzas, an ambitious and confident performance resulting in a compelling blend of ancient and modern. Andres' own “Home Stretch” was itself conceived as a companion piece to another Mozart concerto, but its jagged and disruptive combinations of high, piercing winds and scattered piano figures resolve into an absorbing musical conversation that sounds more about American music, with its bustling drive and echoes of Copland, Ives and Adams.

Download: Home Stretch; Piano Concerto No. 26 in D; Paraphrase on Themes of Brian Eno