Piet Jozef Swerts is one of Belgium's prime composers of accessible music in the postmodernist vein. On his first Antarctica release, he sets himself the considerable challenge of assembling a largescale piano texture from smaller sonatas without relying on worn out romantic formats. Following the example of Bach's Wohltemperierte Klavier, Swerts writes and plays polyphonic music with a modern twist, taking off with Scarlatti at his jazziest, but also echoing Mozart, Wagner, and Purcell. Framed in the Baroque tradition, the new music of Swerts sounds scintillatingly smart, but not cerebral. And his straight strung piano embodies the old-new paradox by fusing modern Steinway comfort with the color and register versatility of a pianoforte.