Reformation
Mishka Rushdie Momen
Reformation is the Hyperion Records debut of British pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen, released on June 28, 2024 as a CD and later made available on vinyl. The album presents a carefully curated selection of late Tudor and early Stuart keyboard music by four composers — William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, John Bull, and the Dutch master Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck — performed on a modern Steinway grand piano rather than the virginals or harpsichord for which the music was originally conceived. Momen addresses this deliberate anachronism directly in her detailed written notes, arguing that the choice is not historically inappropriate but rather a means of drawing out the music's extraordinary expressive range and structural sophistication through the full dynamic and tonal resources of the modern instrument. The album's title is drawn from its central thematic conceit: that the secular keyboard music of the English Renaissance was deeply shaped in spirit, if not in explicit content, by the cultural and religious upheavals of the Reformation, and that composers like Byrd and Bull — both Catholics working under Protestant rule — encoded something of their historical moment in the boldness and complexity of their writing.
The program balances several monumental works with shorter, more intimate pieces. John Bull's Walsingham — thirty variations on a beloved ballad tune that grow progressively more virtuosic and harmonically adventurous — is the album's architectural centerpiece, demanding formidable technique alongside deep structural clarity. Byrd's Pavana Lachrymae (after Dowland's "Flow My Tears"), The Bells, and La Volta represent different facets of his genius, from tender lyricism to pictorial invention and dance energy, while Gibbons's Fantazia of Foure Parts and the "Lord Salisbury" Pavan and Galliard bring the collection to a stately close. Sweelinck's Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la rounds out the program with a work that sits at the intersection of English and Continental keyboard traditions. The album reached No. 1 on the UK Specialist Classical Charts in July 2024 and was named Album of the Week on BBC Radio 3 and Discovery of the Week on Classic FM — a significant debut for a pianist The Guardian has called "quietly beguiling" and The Spectator praised for playing "with thrilling exuberance and subtlety."
Reformation
Mishka Rushdie Momen
Reformation is the Hyperion Records debut of British pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen, released on June 28, 2024 as a CD and later made available on vinyl. The album presents a carefully curated selection of late Tudor and early Stuart keyboard music by four composers — William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, John Bull, and the Dutch master Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck — performed on a modern Steinway grand piano rather than the virginals or harpsichord for which the music was originally conceived. Momen addresses this deliberate anachronism directly in her detailed written notes, arguing that the choice is not historically inappropriate but rather a means of drawing out the music's extraordinary expressive range and structural sophistication through the full dynamic and tonal resources of the modern instrument. The album's title is drawn from its central thematic conceit: that the secular keyboard music of the English Renaissance was deeply shaped in spirit, if not in explicit content, by the cultural and religious upheavals of the Reformation, and that composers like Byrd and Bull — both Catholics working under Protestant rule — encoded something of their historical moment in the boldness and complexity of their writing.
The program balances several monumental works with shorter, more intimate pieces. John Bull's Walsingham — thirty variations on a beloved ballad tune that grow progressively more virtuosic and harmonically adventurous — is the album's architectural centerpiece, demanding formidable technique alongside deep structural clarity. Byrd's Pavana Lachrymae (after Dowland's "Flow My Tears"), The Bells, and La Volta represent different facets of his genius, from tender lyricism to pictorial invention and dance energy, while Gibbons's Fantazia of Foure Parts and the "Lord Salisbury" Pavan and Galliard bring the collection to a stately close. Sweelinck's Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la rounds out the program with a work that sits at the intersection of English and Continental keyboard traditions. The album reached No. 1 on the UK Specialist Classical Charts in July 2024 and was named Album of the Week on BBC Radio 3 and Discovery of the Week on Classic FM — a significant debut for a pianist The Guardian has called "quietly beguiling" and The Spectator praised for playing "with thrilling exuberance and subtlety."