Kevin Gorman - William Bland: Piano Sonatas Nos. 17 & 18 (2021) Hi-Res

William Bland’s cycle of 24 piano sonatas, one in each of the major and minor keys, was composed between the years 1998 and 2014. The cycle is the West Virginia-born composer’s magnum opus, and is a summation of an extraordinarily wide range of cultural influences. The musical content of the sonatas merges strains of the simple and complex, popular and classical, romantic and modernist. American pianist Kevin Gorman, in his debut recording writes: “the essence of these sonatas is passion, which beckons me as a pianist to recipro- cate the intensity with which these originally had been composed.”