Emotional Space Piano miniatures by Tomasz Betka - heard by KEITH BRAMICH '... romantic, jazzy, simple, dreamy, dramatic, passionate, euphoric, sad and even Satiesque, by turns.'

What does music mean, what does it communicate, what makes 'good' music, and when does music for a single instrument need to be composed and written down and as opposed to simply being improvised? I found myself asking all these questions while pondering this disc of ten short miniatures, performed and recorded in Poland on a Steinway D piano by their composer, Tomasz Betka.

The first piece, The Way He Has To Go Through, for example, plays for barely ninety seconds: a simple figure in the right hand uses the first five notes of a rising major scale, and this figure is repeated five times, dropping the fourth note of the scale on the fourth repetition only and placing accents so that the notes of the fourth repetition are highlighted, spread out across the whole figure, then the whole thing is repeated thirteen times, accompanied by simple chords in the left hand...

PIANO MUSIC

POLAND