From the outside, it looks like a barn. But on entering, you step into a spacious hall with a Model D Steinway piano and small recording studio. Potton Hall on the UK’s Suffolk coast is located in Benjamin Britten country. To the north, it’s half an hour from Lowestoft where the composer was born in 1913; to the south, 20 minutes from Aldeburgh where he died in 1976.
It was here, on 15 and 16 February, where Daniel-Ben Pienaar sat down to record, for the first time ever, the complete solo piano music of pioneering South African composer Arnold van Wyk. Pienaar’s work has been critically acclaimed in Gramophone Magazine (Editor’s Choice), BBC Music Magazine (Instrumental Recording of the Month), Britain’s Sunday Times (Top 5 Recordings of 2011),Diapason and Der Spiegel. Van Wyk was part of the beginnings of Western composition in South Africa in the early decades of the twentieth century. He contributed major works to the local classical music canon.
Read the full article on The Conversation https://theconversation.com/reflections-on-the-historic-recordings-of-an-iconic-south-african-composer-93237