*2021 stock* What is one to make of Maria de Alvear’s two long solos for piano, De puro amor (‘Of pure love’) and En amor duro (‘In hard love’), both composed in 1991. The scores themselves, if one decides to start from here, are completely perplexing. Pages and pages are marked with hastily scratched notes, sometimes repeating themselves dozens of times. Little priority seems to have been given to rhythm, dynamics or articulation; even less to the notational conventions such as barlines, spacing or vertical alignment that help a reader or performer orientate themselves and navigate through a piece. They look less like completed works than preliminary sketches. Yet in the hands of the pianist Eve Egoyan, these rough sheets transform into music rich in expressive nuance. - Tim Rutherford-Johnson

Eve first met Maria in Toronto twenty years ago when she performed the North American première of the works on these discs. Performing these pieces was a transformative experience for Eve Egoyan. The score is a map which challenges and guides the interpreter towards a new type of dialogue, blending composer, pianist, and listener in an emotionally charged performance experience.

Just as Maria de Alvear gave herself up to an unpredictable, internal and spiritually determined way of writing, so her performer must embrace the resulting music’s curiosities and ambiguities.

Eve Egoyan is an artist whose medium is the piano. Her performances encompass extremely contrasting sensibilities: from Alvin Curran’s five-hourlong Inner Cities to Erik Satie’s miniatures; from minimalist Simple Lines of Enquiry by Ann Southam to works of maximalist complexity by Michael Finnissy; from the barely audible to roaring, overtone-filled resonances; from the rigorous interpretation of a score to free improvisation.