“It cannot be easy to write for solo piano: so many magnificent sounds of the 18th and 19th centuries abide in the ears of today’s pianists and concertgoers. By including some of his favorite Chopin miniatures alongside three major piano pieces from the 1990’s, Thomas Sauer could well stand accused of an all-too-common reluctance to break from the past. He prefers to treat with this vexed situation pragmatically, acknowledging the reality that most of his listeners will perceive the new refracted through the lens of the old, and that some will simply be more inclined to keep listening when given a dose of the familiar together with the strange. All three recent works recorded here bear some imprint of the pianistic past - each in a different way - and yet all three successfully outrun it. © Azica Records