Gary Steigerwalt - Helen Hopekirk: Piano Music

The Scottish musician Helen Hopekirk (1856�1945) was regarded as one of the major concert pianists of her generation. She also made a lasting contribution as a piano teacher in Boston, Mass., after her emigration in 1897. The early pieces can sound like Brahms in the Highlands, and her later works marry Debussyan Impressionism with Hebridean folk-music, to evocative, touching and exhilarating effect. This is the first album dedicated to her music. Gary Steigerwalt, who is writing a biography of Helen Hopekirk, recently retired as a professor on the music faculty of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where he taught for 35 years. He gave the first performance in over a century of her Concertst�ck with the Mount Holyoke College Symphony Orchestra in 2015.