Utwory na płycie:

• 89. Chopsticks. Vivace (beginning)
• 96. Untitled (beginning)
• Quarto soggetto: à 5 voci from No. 100 (beginning)

CD 1:
84. Tango habanera. Leggiero con grazia indolente
85. (untitled)
86. Adagietto. Legatissimo
87. Studio gammatico
88. (untitled)
89. Chopsticks. Vivace
90. (untitled)
91. Volante leggiero
92. Legato possibile. Velato, misterioso
93. Leggiero saltando
94. Ornaments. Con fantasia
95. (untitled)
96. (untitled)
97. (untitled)
98. Staccato e vivace

CD 2:
99. Quasi Fantasia
(Nello stilo della fantasia cromatica di Giovanni Sebastiano)
100. Coda-Finale. Fuga a cinque soggetti:
Parte prima a due voci - Soggetto primo
Secondo soggetto a 3 voci
Terzo soggetto a 4 voci
Quarto soggetto a 5 voci
Quinto soggetto a 6 voci
Stretto maestrale — Libero quasi cadenza con punta d’organo —
Pieno - largo e maestoso. Quasi Organo pieno

By far the largest collection of concert études in the known repertoire, Kaikhosru Sorabji’s set of 100 Transcendental Studies, composed between 1940 and 1944, has a total duration of more than eight hours. On five previous discs, the Swedish pianist (and neuroscientist) Fredrik Ullén has introduced the first 83 études to a wider audience, the large majority of them appearing on disc for the first time. Now, 15 years after the release of the first volume comes the final instalment, a 2-disc set with the last 17 studies. In his own liner notes, Ullén describes the experience of learning and recording the collection: ‘From the F sharp minor of Study 1 to the F sharp minor chord concluding Study 100: traversing Sorabji’s Transcendental Studies has been somewhat like joining a comet following a long eccentric orbit through pianistic outer space, and finally returning back to mother earth.’

Most of the studies are typical concert études in the sense that they essentially explore a single technical or structural idea. But especially towards the end of the cycle Sorabji includes pieces that are on a much larger scale, a tendency that culminates with the two final études. Quasi fantasia (No. 99) is a hugely expanded elaboration of J. S. Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and is followed by the almost hour-long Coda-Finale, a quintuple fugue of staggering complexity. Besides the programme notes by Fredrik Ullén, the CD booklet includes texts by Kenneth Derus and Alistair Hinton who both knew the composer.

The Swedish pianist Fredrik Ullén has performed at a large number of international music festivals, to outstanding critical acclaim (‘spectacular’, New York Times 2001; ‘jaw-dropping virtuosity’, BBC Music Magazine 2006; ‘superhuman’, Piano News 2006). His repertoire includes many of the most complex and demanding works in the piano literature, such as Ligeti’s complete piano études, Reger’s Spezialstudien and music by Sorabji.

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Recording: June 2018 (Nos 84 88, 92), May 2019 (Nos 89 91, 93 98) and December 2019 (Nos 99 100) at the Aula Medica (Karolinska Institutet), Stockholm, Sweden. Grand piano: Steinway D