“Few things are simpler or more musically satisfying,” says Israeli pianist Benjamin Hochman, “than varying a melody by adding an expressive ornament or changing its harmonisation.”
Here he combines his love of variations, that most basic of processes and durable of musical forms, with his fondness for mixing familiar repertoire with the unfamiliar – Brahms's monumental Handel Variations preceded by works from the second half of the 20th century.
Hochman is acutely responsive to the rapid fluctuations of colour, weight and density in variations by Oliver Knussen, Luciano Berio and Peter Lieberson, and is sensitive to the combination of calm and glitter in George Benjamin's recursive, obsessive Meditation on Haydn's Name.
In the grandeur of Brahms, though, he can sound effortful and heavy-handed.
