Album continues collaboration with pianist, Benjamin Harding

Fort Collins, CO, January 13, 2023 – Composer Gustav Hoyer is releasing his latest offering of new music, A Winter Journal. Available on all popular streaming music platforms, it is a gathering of various works composed during the wintertime. It continues the composer’s collaborations with performances by pianist Benjamin Harding alongside Peter Pejtsik and the musicians of the Budapest Film Orchestra and with artist Scott Laumann who returns with original album art to accompany the release.

Building upon a string of recent releases, A Winter Journal features the premiere of Hoyer’s Piano Sonata in Three Acts composed for pianist Benjamin Harding during the winter of 2005-06.  Mr. Harding comments, “the Piano Sonata has given me the opportunity to process profound thoughts and deep emotions that are both subtle and penetrating.” This three-movement work is a massive and technically difficult work that requires stamina and concentration to perform.  It features a wide variety of techniques from the pianist to render the many intricate layers of the music. Despite these demands, the musical effect is direct and approachable allowing the listener to be carried along an engaging musical epic. Commenting on the experience for audiences, Mr. Harding says, “…they are nurtured along the pathways of self-discovery. What they find is a piece that is fresh, crafted with extreme precision, and inviting.”

Pianist Benjamin Harding has devoted his life to exploring the piano. As such, he is constantly seeking out new ways to promote and present the music of past and contemporary composers. Benjamin has studied at Manhattan School of Music and the University of Maryland and is currently studying the Taubman Approach with Edna Golandsky. He writes for American Music Teacher, is a member of the American Liszt Society and is dean in the School of Music at Cairn University. He is the host of the Piano Explored Podcast and a faculty member of the Csehy Summer School of Music. www.benjaminharding.net.

Alongside the sonata, there are additional newly released works for small string groups. Before the Chill of Winter recalls the warm days of summer from the vantage point of winter austerity, The Golden Sparrow is a musical work composed to create a musical escape room, and Fantasia for Viola and Piano features a viola soloist in both dramatic and lyrical solo writing in dialog with a piano. 

The album is crowning with an orchestral travelogue conceived by the composer on a river cruise along the Danube.  The piece opens with the murmuring eddies of the great European river and this music becomes the separator between stops along the way including Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna, and Passau. The orchestra builds to a conclusion celebrating the inspiring cathedrals along this historic waterway before wistfully returning to the eddies of the Danube.

The artwork for this release comes from accomplished Colorado artist, Scott Laumann. Since the mid-1990's, Mr. Laumann has completed numerous commissions for Time, Rolling Stone, Reader's Digest, GQ, the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Dow Jones, the Grammy Awards, Warner Brothers and Netscape among others. Over the past decade, he has lived and worked in Spain, Philadelphia, Orange County, Minnesota, San Diego, Germany and San Francisco and has exhibited in several galleries in the U.S. and abroad.

Speaking about the music on this album, Hoyer says, “All these works are like a private journal of winters past. Although they are writing for various instruments and with different styles, they are a cross-section of winter musings from 2005-2022.”