Gulistan

Charles Hopkins (piano)

Cd cover image Gulistan

Duration: 35:24

“Hopkins … traces … sinuous … delicate lines with skill and sympathy … recording … appropriately lush and resonant … really an outstanding disc” (American Record Guide)

“I have found every (Altarus) disc (of Sorabji) exceptionally rewarding and extremely well produced … Hopkins’ … illuminating and extremely detailed booklet-notes … the sound-world … a heady, intoxicating brew … underlying intuitive logic … exceptionally difficult to perform … Hopkins makes it sound deceptively easy as he delivers a most ravishing account of this extraordinary work … recorded sound … very fine … a thoroughly rewarding and recommendable disc” (Gramophone)

“… something like a pianistic equivalent of the Szymanowski symphony, but going far beyond Szymanowski in improvisatory fantasy and langorous, iridescent arabesque … Hopkins … clearly an artist of considerable quality and learning … the musical text seems very accurately rendered indeed … Altarus’s admirably clear recording … As well as negotiating the thorniest thickets of Sorabji’s rose-garden Hopkins contributes the liner notes, in the shape of a formidably scholarly and multi-cultured essay on ‘Sorabji, Sa’di and the Sufic tradition’. Colour reproductions of Persian miniatures, and a facsimile of one manuscript page, complete Altarus’s impressive production” (Tempo)