Futurpiano showcases three influential avant-garde composers associated with the Futurist movement, by way of piano music composed between 1913 and 1933.
Arthur-Vincent Lourie was the first Russian Futurist musician, and a signatory of the original St Petersburg Manifesto in 1914. The five Syntheses written that same year offer a form of dodecaphony, while Formes en l'air from 1915 is a Cubo-Futurist conception using an innovative form of notation, dedicated to Pablo Picasso.
Born in the Ukraine but raised in New York, Leo Ornstein gave his first major recital of 'Futurist Music' at the Steinway Hall in London on 27 March 1914. The programme included the two bold pieces featured on this album, Suicide in an Airplane and Three Moods.
American-born 'Bad Boy of Music' George Antheil is represented by Mechanisms (1923), together with a series of preludes written in 1933 and inspired by a graphic novel by Surrealist artist Max Ernst, La Femme 100 Tetes.
