In these three characterful and testing piano studies, composed in the autumn of 1985, Nicholas Maw sought to bypass many of the characteristics of post-war piano writing and take up where the ‘old’ pianism left off.  Over their 25-minute span, they take the instrument as a kind of solo drawing room orchestra put at the  disposal of a virtuoso player, and were written with the physical characteristics of playing the instrument very much in mind; the act of touch, how the ha...