Aleksander Szram
Into the 21st Century

Dai Fujikura (Sleeping ashes and Echo within)

Haris Kittos (Arthros and Atropon)
Michael Spencer (The Eemis Stane-Hommage)

Basil Athanasiadess (Anamnisis)

fonorum 8003 [2006, 47 mins: € 15 from fonorum]

Aleksander Szram is representative of the best of the gifted and accomplished young musicians of the internet generation.

He has nailed his colours to the mast with a debut recording of recent pieces which excite him, by colleagues and friends - several of them with Trinity College of Music connections - and of whom only Dai Fujikura's name has yet become widely known (links to their individual websites above). It is commercially dubious, but shows he is his own man.

Michael Spencer's homage to Sorabji (heard recently in concert with Rzewski's piano trio) uses the case and the inside of the piano to depict a distant future with the earth 'covered by the lichen of time and the fog of history', and Fujikura's Sleeping ashes relate to the Bali terrorist attack in 2002.

Szram has extensive experience as accompanist for prestigious international masterclasses; he is also a harpsichordist and his activities include electroacoustic composition and improvisation...

The music is all focused and concentrated, some of it austere, holding the attention easily with its variety, played and recorded superbly in Stuttgart. Presentation is good, with notes that consist of brief comments by the composers.

Short measure, even though at mid-price; a brave and notably personal disc which merits wider attention than it is likely to receive.

Peter Grahame Woolf

see also Tim Rutherford-Johnson in The Rambler http://johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com/2007/11/12/cd-review-aleksander-szram-into-the-21st-century-fonorum/