Gunnar Johansen: Piano Works

Review: PianoNews Gunnar Johansen 1. Danish Folk Song (1928) 2. Lullaby for Lorraine (1943) Sonata III (1943) 3. Imperiosamente, molto deciso 4. Fugare; Quieto 5. Passacaglia; Andante Semplice 6. Ricantazione; Coda (Tragico, tenebrae) from Twelve Etudes Plus One (1977) 7. Etude #1 8. Etude #4 9. Catenaria #1 (1968) Sonata XXIII (Trilogie der Leidenschaft) (1949) 10. An Werther 11. Elegie 12. Aussöhnung 13. The Lullaby My Mother Sang (1936) Gunnar Johansen © Solon Pierce In a stroke of rather fortuitous good fortune, I grew up in a town that was about 5 miles from where Copenhagen-born Gunnar Johansen (1906-1991) settled in the woods of southern Wisconsin in the United States. Johansen as a pianist and composer was a world figure, but first and foremost struck you as a genuinely approachable human being of uncommon warmth–he left a profound and lasting impression both as a musician and as a man. I first met Johansen in 1982, played for him several times over the course of the succeeding years, and heard him perform numerous times towards the end of his life. Although Johansen’s initial experience in the United States was to be in California, based in the San Francisco Bay area for the first decade of his years in America, Johansen found his true second home in a state that locates its flagship university (the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Johansen was appointed as the first musical artist in residence in the USA in 1939) in the county of Dane. States in the American Midwest such as Minnesota (Swedes) and Wisconsin (Norwegians and some Danes) were heavily populated by Scandinavian immigrants especially in the later 19th and early 20th century, and when Johansen arrived in 1939, he proceeded to fit right in. RELEASE DATE: MARCH 2022 CATALOGUE NUMBER: DACOCD 908 EAN: 5709499908006 Download BOOKLET (PDF) Related