Ivan Ilic (piano): The Transcendentalist

There's no lack of thinking behind Serbian-American pianist Ivan Ilic's new CD, which brings together eight slow-moving pieces by Scriabin (one is even called Poème languide), John Cage (Dream and In a Landscape), Morton Feldman (Palais de Mari) and Scott Wollschleger (Music Without Metaphor). Ilic's forgoing of contrast applies to his style of playing as well as his choice of repertoire. He is strong on the pattern-making of music in which regularity of delivery, however haloed, stained or blurred by the sustaining pedal, is unlikely to come across as an unalloyed virtue. To my ears the music seems rather straitjacketed by the concept, the experience of listening becoming akin to a lecture or the demonstration of a point of view. url.ie/sjo7