Gramophone Magazine
November 2024
Editor's Choice

Hanni Liang (piano)

Smyth: Sonata No. 2 in C-Sharp Minor
Wallen: I Wouldn't Normally Say
Smyth: Variations in D-Flat Major on an Original Theme (of an Exceeding Dismal Nature)
Beamish: Night Dances
Chen Yi: Variations on ‘Awariguli’
Alberga: Cwicseolfor

A pioneer of new concert formats, using music to communicate and bring people together, Hanni Liang was long sceptical about the traditional role of recording in progressing an artist's career. It was her discovery of Ethel Smyth - both as a composer and as a person and a woman, fighting without compromise - that sparked the inspiration that led to Voices.

In this album she has created a programme that both champions women's voices that, without the determination of Smyth and others like her, might otherwise have been silent, and allows her to raise her own voice, reflecting both her European birth and upbringing and her Chinese roots.

"The pianist does full justice to the five women whose works on this disc add up to one of the most unhackneyed, unpredictable, well-constructed, musically diverse and interpretatively gratifying piano releases I’ve encountered." - Gramophone Magazine, November 2024