Presto Editor's Choices - September 2018

Ivan Ilic (piano)

Reicha, A: Études dans le genre fugué, Op. 97
Reicha, A: Fugues (36) for Piano, Op. 36, No. 12, Allegretto

"Don’t be put off by the dry-sounding title of the main work on this second instalment of Ilic’s survey of the piano music of Antoine Reicha (1770-1836): 34 ‘Études dans le genre fugué’ struck me as a fairly forbidding prospect, but I was hooked from the second track onwards thanks to Reicha’s own powers of pastiche and invention (more than once I was put in mind of the Diabelli Variations, written around the same time), and the incredible variety of timbre which Ilic summons to characterise each miniature." - Katherine Cooper, Presto Classical