Hba: Kompletn dlo pro klavr – 2 CD

This two-disc set presents the first complete recording of Alois Hbas works for the conventional piano, performed by Miroslav Beinhauer. Hba is known in twentieth-century music history as an experimenter who developed his own theory of microtonal music, but he also wrote more than half of his output within the standard semitone system. His aim was to move from traditional training towards an independent artistic expression with strongly altered harmony and melody, reaching a personal style through Bach, Schumann and Reger. This approach can be heard in the Sonata Op. 3, which earned him great recognition from Franz Schreker and was humorously described by Vtzslav Novk as a sonata for three hands. Erwin Schulhoff premiered the Two Grotesque Pieces in Berlin in 1922, where Hbas music was praised as more authentic than much of the work around it. After Toccata quasi una fantasia in 1931, Hba returned to the piano only forty years later, at the end of his life, with Six Moods. Miroslav Beinhauer, who focused on twentieth- and twenty-first-century music during his studies in Vienna and Ghent, became acquainted with Hba through his works for the sixth-tone harmonium and later studied his complete works for conventional piano. The programme includes Sonata in E-flat minor, Three Fugues, Variations on a Canon by Robert Schumann, Two Pieces Op. 2, Sonata Op. 3, Six Pieces Op. 6, Two Grotesque Pieces, Romance, Waltz, Four Modern Dances Op. 39, ShimmyFox, Toccata quasi una fantasia Op. 38 and Six Moods Op. 102.