Shai Wosner plays Impromptus

After his wonderfully quirky and highly praised Haydn & Ligeti album, Shai Wosner returns to solo piano repertoire for his next project. As always with this artist, there is something very different on offer – Impromptus by Chopin, Dvorak, Liszt, Gershwin, and Schubert rub shoulders with Beethoven’s Fantasy Op.77 – the nearest thing we have to a Beethoven ‘improvisation’. The composer did indeed improvise this work at a private house performance, then went home and wrote it down from memory! Ives’s Improvisations 1&3 round off an eclectic programme.

“There is a rush that comes with losing yourself in an improvisation – the liberating feeling you get when that thing you are making up on the spot seems to take on a life of its own while you are just tagging along (there is also the thrill in the risk that whole thing might fall flat at any moment). I have loved it ever since” Shai Wosner.