The word “return” is ripe with meaning; a universal idea across human civilizations, both ancient and modern. In the bible, we come from dust and to dust we shall return and the prodigal son returns home to seek redemption. The cyclical nature of reality continues to be the major aspect of Hindu philosophy while the first century Chinese poet Zhang Heng (78-139) dreams of “wending back to the thatched cottage and plucking the five strings (of the pipa) with deft fingers” in his nostalgic masterpiece, Return to the Field. In our more ordinary daily lives we get a return on our investment, we go beyond the point of no return, we return purchases, or someone wishes us a happy return of the day for our birthday.

This recording is a personal exploration of returning as a concept. Sometimes it is a purely structural technique: in the title piece, Per Nørgård’s Returns, an undulating, dance-like motive continually reappears within a form that is essentially a palindrome centered around a section of chords and intervals whose lengths are partly aleatoric. In other cases, returning means reevaluating the earliest attempts at a musical journey: the first five of Leo Brouwer’s Estudios Sencillos—simple studies—are some of the first pieces I remember learning with my first teacher, my father. Like those of Bach and Schumann, Brouwer’s little masterpieces were written to capture the imagination of kids at the very outset of the music learning process. They lose none of their appeal and artistic integrity even decades after that process has begun.

Other selections here are motivated by that mysterious intersection of memory, nostalgia and identity that is hard to define in words but somehow easier to express in sound.