Classical Essentials

Ralph Vaughan Williams  The Lark Ascending

Thirteen miniature journeys, each a complete world in ninety seconds.

In this new album, Samuel Hamish Gray continues his exploration of spontaneous composition — music created entirely in the moment, unpremeditated yet intricately formed. Each piece was conceived, performed, and completed in a single take, bound only by one strict parameter: a duration of exactly one minute and thirty seconds.

Within that constraint lies astonishing freedom. The result is thirteen concise piano works — cinematic, lyrical, sometimes fragile, sometimes dramatic — each a distilled emotional narrative. Gray’s playing moves from shimmering introspection to bold, cinematic resonance, his improvisations sculpted by instinct and refined by long experience in both classical and jazz idioms.

Listeners familiar with his Sirius Suite (2025), a meditation on loss and love, will recognize the same immediacy and tenderness, but here the focus is on compression: each piece a single breath, a fleeting vision, a self-contained journey.

Gray is known for his fully spontaneous solo piano performances in Norway, New Zealand, and beyond, and for his forthcoming long-form work Norgesvenn (2026), recorded as one continuous arc. These new miniatures reveal another side of his artistry — concise, pure, and perfectly balanced between composition and improvisation.

Perfect for reflective playlists, film and documentary use, or simply quiet listening, each piece can stand alone, loop seamlessly, or fade into thought — small universes of sound, carved from silence.

Miniatures

Impromptu à l’aveugle I

"That’s what happened to each of them: they crawled inside the piano, underneath its shell, and roused what they had kept hidden beneath its keys."

https://antonindebemels.bandcamp.com/album/la-douceur

Improvised by Olivier Taskin
Recorded and mixed by Antonin De Bemels
Mastered by Yvan Hanon
Picture by @antonindebemels

LA DOUCEUR

Stase

“Vemos la luz del atardecer anaranjada y violeta porque llega demasiado cansada de luchar contra el espacio y el tiempo”
“We see the light of the sunset as orange and violet because it arrives too tired from fighting against space and time”
(Albert Einstein)

La luz del atardecer

compo20241205 (La luz del atardecer)

Sarabande

Keyboard Suite No. 4 in D Minor, HWV 437: III. Sarabande (Orch. Hale)

Debussy: Suite bergamasque, L. 75, 3. Clair de lune

III. Clair de lune

Rachmaninoff plays Rachmaninoff: The Piano Concertos and Solo Pieces

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43: XX. Variation 18: Andante cantabile

J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, BWV 846-869 / Prelude & Fugue in C Major, BWV 846: I. Prelude

J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier I, Prelude & Fugue No. 1 in C Major, BWV 846: I. Prelude

III. Clair de lune

Alice Sara Ott

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