CD Review | Banff Suite, Frank Horvat; Vicky Chow

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Redshift Records
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Horvat: Banff Suite

Vicky Chow, piano

Redshift Records, 2025

Frank Horvat’s Banff Suite is a set of eight pieces for solo piano composed during a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in the fall of 2021. Each of the eight pieces is inspired by a hiking trail he and his wife used during that stay. The music vividly reflects the varied nature of the hikes, from the lung-wrenching switchbacks of Sulphur Mountain to the tranquility of Bow River.

I particularly liked Johnston Canyon, perhaps because I have hiked that trail. It’s a longish piece and I felt it captured the transition from the human and watery chaos of the popular boardwalk to the beauty and tranquility of the Ink Pots, which are mercifully too far from the trailhead to attract the crowds!

Horvat has a knack for evoking the natural world in music. In this respect, this recording reminded me of his other works such as More Rivers. There’s usually some kind of repeated phrase or fragment evoking movement. This can be overlaid with a more melodic line for beauty and stillness and a busier line, flirting with atonality, for more frantic or energetic scenarios.

Horvat’s effective palette

Occasionally the background minimalism fades away to leave just a very sparse, mysteriously beautiful line. The second half of Johnston Canyon has a good example of this. At the other end of the spectrum sometimes we are offered something much more “physical” and percussive. Sections of Sacred Buffalo Guardian Mountain possess this quality, with a sound like hammering on an anvil (extended technique?) but even this resolves into tranquility. It’s a very effective palette for what this piece is seeking to do.

This is complex music that places significant demands on the pianist. Vicky Chow does a fine job of handling and drawing out the different moods and sonorities. She’s helped by an excellent clear and well-balanced recording made at Toronto’s Imagine Sound Studios in September 2024. The recording is being released digitally in 44.1kHz/24bit resolution with MP3 and streaming options. The digital booklet has succinct but helpful notes on each track, accompanied by some rather beautiful and evocative photographs.

All in all, it’s an interesting and enjoyable album—especially if one is familiar with the landscapes that inspired it.