专辑简介

"The Dance of the Birds" is an environmentally inspired piano suite. An American music professor recently described the title track as "three and a half minutes of the most beautiful music you'll hear in your lifetime, no matter what your musical tastes." Simialr accolades have come from the media worldwide. The sense of beauty is everywhere on this album; the opening depicts the courtship dance between a pair of cranes, "The Living Forest", the majestic "Hymn for Planet Earth" and "In the Fall" (tracks 6,7 & 8) display a similar lyricism. "The Journey" (track 2) is a sprightly descrption of the perilous journey a rainforest seed has to make, falling from the forest canopy, bouncing along rocks and streams, until it comes to rest and can start life anew (the closing cadenza is technically dazzling.) On the other hand, "The Oil Spill" is graphic illustration of a tanker running aground, oil seeping into the sea and onto the shore, after which oiled up seabirds try to fly, but cannot. This is counterpointed by the joyful "Meerkat Rag" (track 4) and a dreamy evocation of the tranquil Maldive Islands as they slowly sink beneath rising ocean tides (track 5). The "Etude on a theme by Granados" and "Habanera" (tracks 9 & 11) represent a homage to Spanish music, the latter, plus the "Waltz in E Major" (track 10) revisiting the melodic intensity of the earlier tracks, whilst the album concludes with 3 bonus tracks, an upbeat setting of the famous 23rd Psalm, and two highly evocative pieces for violin and piano.

David Scheel is one of Australia's leading composers, winning his first major composers' competition at the age of only 16. He has written in all musical genres except opera; including a large amount of chamber music, several orchestra suites, music for theatre, two symphonies and an oratorio, all in a wide variety of styles, but predominantly neo-classical. His piano music, however, is more New Age, and has a special immediacy to it. As Scheel explains: "when you play your own music hundreds of times in concerts worldwide, you have to capture the audience's attention with each piece, and the best way to do this is through melodies and harmonies that they will not forget. When I play a piece, and at the end I hear a voice in the audience whisper 'that was beautiful' I know I have made that connection, and done my job."