{"product_id":"cc72853-nox","title":"Nox","description":"\u003cem\u003eNox \u003c\/em\u003eis the Latin word for night. It's also the name of the new solo album from Pianist Hannes Minnaar on the Challenge Classics label, his first in four years. Nox features one of the young generation's leading pianists playing the music of Robert Schumann’s \u003cem\u003eNachtstücke\u003c\/em\u003e, Robert Zuidam’s \u003cem\u003eNox,\u003c\/em\u003e and Maurice Ravel’s \u003cem\u003eGaspard de la Nuit\u003c\/em\u003e in Stereo and Multichannel DSD 64.\r\n\r\nIn the world of art, the night of Schumann's \u003cem\u003eNachtstücke\u003c\/em\u003e, Robert Zuidam's \u003cem\u003eNox\u003c\/em\u003e and Ravel's \u003cem\u003eGaspard de la Nuit\u003c\/em\u003e creaks open its doors like a haunted castle for romantic poets and composers. Night-time visions became the foundations of a pre-Freudian subconscious in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Some of the great writers discovered their dreams and anxieties, seeing themselves and the magic of imagination in the mirror of fantasy.\r\n\r\nIt was no coincidence that their work provided intellectual sustenance for Robert Schumann (1810-1856), who also had a literary gift. His earliest works, which were entirely for piano up until his \u003cem\u003eNachtstücke\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eOp. 23\u003c\/em\u003e (1839), originated in psychological impressions gained from literature. Schumann wrote to his beloved, Clara Wieck, that the work stemmed from a premonition. During the composition, he kept seeing visions of funeral processions, “Coffins and miserable, despairing people”. His instincts had not deceived him: on completing the work, with tears in his eyes, he heard that his brother Eduard was on his deathbed. Listening to the \u003cem\u003eNachtstücke\u003c\/em\u003e again and knowing this, one can hear the shadows falling over light and life, depicted by the pianist's defeated irony. For Dutch composer Robert Zuidam (b. 1964), the night is the night of toil. \u003cem\u003eNox\u003c\/em\u003e (2020) is a night owl's ode to the hours of his creativity.\r\n\r\nRavel had done everything he could in his piano cycles \u003cem\u003eJeux d'eau\u003c\/em\u003e (1901) and \u003cem\u003eMiroirs\u003c\/em\u003e (1905) towards de-romanticizing the 19th Century character sketch, but he took a major step forward in \u003cem\u003eGaspard\u003c\/em\u003e as regards both virtuosity and idiom. His aim was to produce something that was even more difficult to play than Balakirev's notorious \u003cem\u003eIslamey\u003c\/em\u003e. \u003cem\u003eGaspard\u003c\/em\u003e is a deranged combination of abstract pianistic hyper-virtuosity with derailed eruptions of waltzes, peppered with raging, flamenco-style note repetitions, and unplayable cascades of clusters of seconds, betraying the signature of Ravel's exceptionally dexterous thumbs.\r\n\r\nBut Gaspard is a symphonic poem for piano. The work is subtitled \u003cem\u003eTrois Poèmes pour piano d'après Aloysius Bertrand\u003c\/em\u003e, and these poems are also printed out in full in the score. They are drawn from the collection of prose poems entitled \u003cem\u003eGaspard de la Nuit, Fantaisies à la manière de Rembrandt et de Callot\u003c\/em\u003e, which were published in 1842. The infernal degree of difficulty is a metaphor for their contents; as Ravel himself stressed in one of his letters, Gaspard is in fact the devil.\r\n\r\n\u003cstrong\u003eHannes Minnaar, Piano\u003c\/strong\u003e\r\n\r\n[embed]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jEysQYkVWxI[\/embed]","brand":"Challenge Classics","offers":[{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56739418472772,"sku":"CC72853-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56739418505540,"sku":"CC72853-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56739418538308,"sku":"CC72853-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56739418571076,"sku":"CC72853-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56739418603844,"sku":"CC72853-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57311053807940,"sku":"CC72853-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57338549207364,"sku":"CC72853S1417","price":28.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/CC72853.jpg?v=1790541879","url":"https:\/\/www.nativedsd.com\/products\/cc72853-nox","provider":"NativeDSD Music","version":"1.0","type":"link"}