It's not exactly common, but various artists have played Renaissance keyboard music on the piano. The contrast between the modern sound world and the textures of the music can be bracing, but this release by pianist
Francesco Tristano is something else again. His goals are not clear from the booklet, which contains very little information, but
Tristano seems to be trying to use Renaissance music as the basis for a kind of crossover offering. As the title
On Early Music suggests, he is not simply performing early music but creating a perspective or riff on it. He plays music of
Girolamo Frescobaldi,
Peter Philips, John Bull, and Orlando Gibbons, but half of the pieces are compositions by
Tristano himself. Some of these hew closely to Renaissance models, but others depart from them, and the final Aria for RS alludes to them only slightly.
Tristano uses a sharp, harpsichord-like tone on the piano, with little pedal in the pieces that are not modified with electronics. Most unorthodox is the addition of these electronic layers; consider the track named On Cristobal de Morales Circumdederunt for an idea.
Tristano's electronic touch is not heavy here, and nobody else has tried anything like this. That's the bottom line with this release, which may be recommended to the curious. ~ James Manheim