Although the British composer Ken Hesketh (b. 1968) writes for many different ensembles, he regards the piano in his own words as "his" instrument, which is why he has composed enough pieces for piano by now to fill an entire CD. Clare Hammond, with whom he has already long worked and who is also the dedicatee of an almost 45-minute long work, Horae, has now compiled his pieces composed between 2002 and 2012. As it happens, these pieces are conceived in an expressly pianistic way, demanding a great deal from the interpreter, but they lie well under the hand and also sound engaging. For the most part Hesketh restricts himself to the "normal" method of playing on the keys, and it is only at some exposed places that the interpreter must reach into the body of the instrument. While the composer makes use of almost the entire registral breadth of the piano, these works always remain however sonorous and harmonically interesting; Clare Hammond succeeds outstandingly in bringing out the changing sonorities with flawless transparency and technique. Since the pieces bear descriptive titles, one might have wished several times for a somewhat more characteristic sound; Hesketh depicts, as it were, in each piece all that the piano is capable of... The interpreter conveys in any case a sense of the work which is neither conventional nor avant-garde in a brittle way, but always retains allusions of tonal stimuli.
Dr. Hartmut Lück