Suk: Piano Works - complete

Josef Suk (1874-1935), the leading exponent of the Czech Modern movement, was so talented that he began to study at Prague Conservatory when he was only eleven. He began to compose at an early age, and although he was a violinist by trade he wrote for the piano throughout his entire life. As much as Suk loved to write, composition was a "sideline" for him, (much as it was for Gustav Mahler, whose was primarily employed as head of the Vienna Opera), whereas his "full time job" was his career as the second violinist of the famous Czech Quartet, with which he traveled the world, playing thousands of concerts between 1892 and 1933. The piano was Suk's intimate artistic confessor and interpreter, privy to his innermost feelings andmoods. It would be only a slight exaggeration to call his piano works a piano reduction of his abstract musical and creative workshop. The career of Czech pianist Pavel Štěpán (1925-1998),who recorded this collection, continues a great family tradition; his father is the composer, pianist, theorist and Suk specialist Václav Štěpán. His five LP recording of the complete piano worksof Josef Suk was awarded a Supraphon Gold Album in 1978. His friend and chamber music partner Ilja Hurník has written that "the art of Pavel Štěpán is an art of suggestive hints, which thanks to his precise technique