A native of Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles, Wim Statius Muller (1930-2019) studied piano and composition with Josef Raieff at the Juilliard School, receiving his degree in 1954. Following a stint teaching at Ohio State University, Statius Muller worked outside of music for many years as a civil servant, including a management position at the Domestic Security Service in The Hague and then at the NATO headquarters in Brussels. After retiring in 1995, he returned to Curaçao and his musical roots.

Most of Statius Muller’s piano works are inspired by traditional Caribbean dances and are uniformly tuneful, succinct, idiomatically laid out for the piano and full of charm. In a way, Statius Muller’s Antillean Dances parallel Ernesto Nazareth’s similarly styled Brazilian piano dances, and deserve to be much better known than they are.

The René Gailly label released the composer’s own performances of the Op 4 Antillean Dances on a long-out-of-print and difficult-to-source CD. Louise Bessette now takes up the cause. She allows herself more expressive leeway in introspective works such as ‘Despedida’ (Op 4 No 25) and ‘Montmartre’ (Op 4 No 6), while brooding over the waltz ‘Nostalgia’ (Op 2 No 22) far more deliberately in comparison to faster and lighter recorded interpretations by Hiroaki Takenouchi (Danacord, 10/15) and Marcel Worms (Zefir). At times I wish Bessette would articulate Statius Muller’s accompaniments with a stronger rhythmic profile and sense of ‘swing’, as her rather stiff treatment of the pieces inspired by the traditional tumba bear out. Similarly, the syncopations in the waltz ‘Toteki’ (Op 4 No 9) never quite lock in to create an undulating background.

Yet while it’s hard to ascertain the basic waltz pulse in ‘Avila Beach’ (Op 4 No 2), you can’t deny Bessette’s gift for shaping and projecting melodies, here and elsewhere. As such, I’d recommended this release for the pianist’s lyrical strengths, while hoping that Statius Muller’s more idiomatic interpretations will resurface. Excellent annotations, sound and graphics.