Best Piano Music for Relaxation & Study - Classical, Jazz & Modern Piano Songs for Home, Spa & Meditation

James H. North, Fanfare magazineJohn Knowles Paine (1839–1906) was America’s first major classical composer; only Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a more radical individualist, had preceded him. Paine was trained in Europe, and one can find influences everywhere if one cares to look: Chopin, Schuman, perhaps even Brahms. The Romances and Nocturne, played in the headnote order, progress in interest; op. 45 can hold its own with the European giants. Most fascinating is the Prelude in FT Minor: Bach filtered through Chopin, which turns out to be a winning progression. Despite its European ties, I’ve always found something “American” in Paine’s music: a freshness of spirit that shines through its classical structures. I have a similar feeling for the music of Amy Marcy Cheney Beach; between them, they produced the first three grand American symphonies (with Gottschalk’s A Night in the Tropics again a wonderful outlier). One of my most treasured memories is being introduced to Paine’s First Symphony and the miraculous Troy Savings Bank Music Hall on the same night.It’s hard to imagine that any more Paine could match that gorgeous Nocturne; the Ten Sketches are lightweight miniatures (each runs from 1:01 to 2:45), lovely, recalling the lighter Chopin waltzes, but less meaty. I won’t trouble you with all the titles: “The Shepherd’s Lament” is suitably wistful, “Village Dance” perky, “Rainy Day” just a drizzle, not a downpour; “Gipsies” [sic] is wild and free. To close the cycle, a rather mournful “Farewell” goes attacca into a happy, virtuosic “Welcome Home.”A Christmas Gift, Paine’s first published work, is not up to the same level, sometimes stentorian, sometimes salonish. Nor is the Funeral March, another early work.Paine’s later pieces show that he was learning constantly and solidifying his own style. Four Characteristic Piano Pieces, op. 25 (1876), are Dance, Romance, Impromptu, and Rondo Gioicoso. The opening and closing pages of Impromptu are an outburst of Brahms, who might have been proud to have written those pages. Rondo Giocoso calls for great virtuosity, which Christopher Atzinger delivers. Three Piano Pieces, op. 41 (1884), end with Fuga Giocosa, in which Paine develops a popular baseball ditty into a spectacular fugue.Denver Oldham played a similar Paine recital on a two-CD New World set; I was pleased with his playing (Fanfare 17:1), but David Johnson excoriated him for “clumsy playing, too many passages marred by wrong notes, and too four square, unyielding an approach to phrasing.” Atzinger plays Paine’s music with sweep and color. I think it is the piano that gives forte passages a slightly hard edge; it’s a Steinway D, but its lower tones are not as full and rounded as is usually the case with that model. Fine recorded sound rounds out a lovely disc; I can’t remember when I was last reintroduced to such lovely piano music.