Composer/pianist Timo Andres is the guest on the latest episode of The Next Track podcast. He talks with hosts Doug Adams and Kirk McElhearn and about the new Apple Music Classical app and a number of contemporary classical pieces, including those on his own Nonesuch albums Home Stretch and Shy and Mighty, Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, Morton Feldman’s Piano and String Quartet, Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, Terry Riley’s In C, and works by Cage, Messiaen, Pärt, Rzewski, Takemitsu, and Sufjan Stevens. You can hear their conversation here via Apple Podcasts:

Timo Andres performs works by Reich, Glass, Laurie Anderson, Nico Muhly, Louis Andriessen, and Donnacha Dennehy, as well as his own piece “Wise Words,” on the 2020 album I Still Play. The album features eleven new solo piano compositions by artists who have recorded for Nonesuch Records, written in honor of the label’s longtime President Bob Hurwitz on the occasion of his 2017 shift into the Chairman Emeritus role.

On Shy and Mighty, his 2010 debut album, Andres offers what the New York Times calls "a richly imaginative 10-movement work for two pianos," performed by Andres and pianist David Kaplan. The New Yorker calls it "the kind of sprawling, brazen work that a young composer should write," achieving "an unhurried grandeur that has rarely been felt in American music since John Adams came on the scene."

On the 2013 album Home Stretch, Andres pairs the newly composed title work with two reinventions of works by musical heroes in Mozart "Coronation" Concerto Re-Composition, described by The New Yorker's Alex Ross as "mesmerizing," and Paraphrase on Themes of Brian Eno. Metropolis Ensemble chamber orchestra performs with the composer on piano. The album, says NPR, offers "thought-provoking glimpses into how the past and the present merge in classical music today." The Chicago Reader says it "bursts with creativity.” The Guardian and the Independent give it four stars.