Richard Masters - Percy & Friends: Piano Music of Grainger & His Circle (2019/2020)

American pianist, Richard Masters, explores the piano works of Percy Grainger and his circle - while a student at the Hoch Conservatory, Frankfurt, Grainger studied piano with James Kwast and composition with Ivan Knorr. Knorr provided a key connection to four other composition students who would eventually be known as the Frankfurt Group. The group was comprised of five English-speaking expatriates: Grainger, Norman O’Neill (1875-1934), Cyril Scott (1879-1970), Henry Balfour Gardiner (1877-1950), and Roger Quilter (1877-1953). They wished to break out in new directions, to free English music from the yoke of Germanic oppression, blazing new trails that did not rely on the work of the much-despised Beethoven or other similar Teutons for guidance. The result was music that embraced irregular rhythms, exotic harmonies, expanding the vocabulary of the piano and utilizing it as a technicolour, evocative, and sometimes percussive instrument.