American Record Guide

38 piano pieces by English composer Bernard Hughes, most of them miniatures cobbled together into suites. Partita Contrafacta (Counterfeit Partita) has seven dances, each a substitute for a baroque one, and each crediting a baroque composer. All are witty and expertly crafted; my favorite is ‘Tango—instead of an Allemande (after JS Bach)’. Bagatelles has 12 little pieces, including some “insanely difficult parodies of Czerny”. A group of Three Studies includes a head-spinning Cornice Fish Passacaglia’. The album’s longest work (9:37) is the dizzying Strettos and Striations.

Superb playing by pianist Matthew Mills, for whom Hughes composed many of the pieces.

—Barry Kilpatrick