Three "night music" pieces by Czech composer Petr Bakla, centered around the piano.
All my music is night music, says Petr Bakla. Three pieces featured on the album Late Night Show span almost a decade and provide varied examples of his style, "so specific and personal, so allergic to fashion or aesthetic trend", as Eric Wubbels puts it in the insightful liner note. The central instrument is the piano, operated by Bakla's longtime collaborator Miroslav Beinhauer, accompanied by the musicians of Brno Contemporary Orchestra.
Petr Bakla (born 1980 in Prague) composes orchestral, chamber and solo pieces. In his compositions, he often employs basic pitch-based material, typically the chromatic and the whole-tone scales. He is interested in constructing situations and structural contexts in which these frugal musical elements can acquire a unique expressiveness and energy. A frequent feature of Bakla's work is a simultaneous course of two musical/sound layers which, although usually markedly differing in dynamics to allow for a sense of "figure and background", are not mutually subordinating—they are of equal importance, their "friction" creating specific tension and ambiguity. Petr Bakla's music has been played in Europe and the USA, in many cases commissioned and/or performed by distinguished ensembles, soloists and conductors. Of particular importance for him has been his collaboration with the Ostrava Days festival, which has made possible the performance of numerous works of his for large ensemble or symphony orchestra.
