The piano music of the American Allen Shawn (*1948) impresses with its stylistic diversity and an extraordinary sense for the aesthetics of timbre. With an almost improvised spontaneity, he fully exploits the range of rhythmic virtuosity and gripping energy to the expression of deepest thoughtfulness and melancholy. Shawn’s emotionality communicates itself immediately to the listener – and it surprises: there is no continuity of harmonic pattern here; form and melody break up. A foreboding expectation of the unpredictable runs like a thread through his music, which Julia Bartha presents to us as a worthwhile discovery.