Despite his premature death at age 35, Charles Tomlinson Griffes was one of the most prophetic voices in American music. The shy and sensitive Griffes was drawn to all things beautiful and was himself, a talented painter. One of his watercolours appears on the cover. His musical style evolved rapidly from the German academicism of his teachers to the exotic influences of impressionism and the Orient, which are to be found in his mature works.

Included on this first volume of the complete Piano Works of Griffes, are three CD premiers: the Chopinesque B Minor Prelude, dating from the composer’s fifteenth year, the Wagnerian A Winter Landscape, composed around 1912 and a beguiling arrangement of Offenbach’s famous Barcarolle. The rest of the program traces Griffes’ phenomenal path from late Romanticism (De Profundis, Rhapsody in B minor), through impressionism (Three Tone Pictures, Op. 5, Roman Sketches, Op. 7) to his “shockingly original” Piano Sonata of 1919.