by Thom JurekThese 13 "fantasies" -- actually impromptu/improvised pieces for solo piano -- account for one of the most moving and intensely focused recordings in Georg Graewe's oeuvre. Virtually every piece here is steeped in the kind of immediacy that can only be expressed when one's discipline is equal to that of his inspiration and technique. Graewe's development as an improviser and as a composer can be traced in his sense of aesthetics. His tone has become more rounded and full, allowing each note its full measure on the keys before moving on with his ideas. His "neatness" is not fastidious, but poetic. Most of the pieces here range between two and a half and five minutes, with one or two shorter and one, number 11, lasting just over seven minutes. There are many chromatic schemes at work here, textural placements and extrapolations as harmonic ideas are stretched along the keyboard before giving way to articulations and impressions of melody as it stands outside the notions of rhythm and time in a kind of impure space. The feeling of these pieces is consistently direct, never ponderous or uncertain; these are not so much explorations, but articulations of a musical mind that thinks beyond the monument, yet serves his aesthetic at all times. This is a brilliant and necessary recording for anyone interested in either modern piano music or the new improv work, or for the cynic who believes that improvisation is a dirty word and has never moved beyond the angry free jazz of the 1960s. Listen and be awed.