Liaisons: Re-Imagining Sondheim from the Piano

The brainchild of the pianist Anthony de Mare, this album takes a group of Stephen Sondheim’s finest songs and entrusts them to leading composers to reinvent. Alongside de Mare himself, the project draws upon 36 names, rich in various styles and ideas—from Mason Bates, Eve Beglarian, and William Bolcom to Wynton Marsalis, Nico Muhly, and Steve Reich. Each reveals imagination, love, and boundless inventiveness over the course of the program’s three-and-a-quarter hours. There are some real gems here.