piano Sonatas Archive
Philippe Entremont Plays Beethoven – Solo Musica
Hats off to veteran Philippe Entremont!
BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonatas, Opp. 109, 110, & 111 – Steven Osborne, piano – Hyperion
Osborne astounds…!
Weber & Schubert: Piano Sonatas – Paul Lewis – Harmonia mundi
Two divergent visions of Romantic Piano Music, through Paul Lewis’ gifted hands…
Franz Joseph HAYDN. Piano Sonatas, Vol. 1— Roman Rabinovich — First Hand Records
A great advent of recordings of Haydn Sonatas!
Franz Josef HAYDN: Piano Sonatas — Anne-Marie McDermott, piano — Bridge
Franz Josef HAYDN: Piano Sonatas, Volume 2 — Anne-Marie McDermott, piano — Bridge 9497, 69:00, (5/27/18) ****1/2: The love comes across in this recital of Haydn sonatas by an experienced artist Anne-Marie McDermott presents four sonatas by Haydn in her second volume of his piano sonatas: numbers 48, 39, 46, and 37. I already knew McDermott for her technical abilities with fleeting fingers alongside her panache for crisp articulation. Despite my personal preference for a period piano and a chamber acoustic, this album presents an honest recital that’s chock full of love for this music by an experienced and capable artist. Haydn would have known the earliest pianos and harpsichords as the keyboard instruments in his time. The modern piano offers a significantly wider dynamic range and more significant sound. The modern performer on the piano has decisions to make: do I limit my playing to limit the dynamic range and volume, or, perhaps, see what the modern instrument can offer the music? McDermott takes the latter approach, employing the full capabilities of Yamaha’s top-tier concert grand to Haydn’s music. A profound example of this approach is the slow movement of the 37th sonata, marked Large e sostenuto. Complete with […]
Angela Hewitt—The Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Vol. 7
Angela Hewitt extends her Beethoven cycle with four works of disparate emotional content. BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2 “Tempest”; Piano Sonata No. 13 in E-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 1; Piano Sonata No. 25 in G Major, Op. 79; Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major, Op. 109 – Angela Hewitt, piano – Hyperion CDA68199, 70:22 (6/1/18) [Distr. by Harmonia mundi/PIAS] ****: Recorded 28 November – 1 December 2016, this set of Beethoven sonatas constitutes the seventh volume in Angela Hewitt’s ongoing recorded cycle. Insofar as Beethoven’s piano sonata provide him a kind of experimental laboratory in which to manipulate forms and structures, the 1801 Sonata quasi fantasia in E-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 1, offers some fascinating procedures. The music opens, Andante, with a narrow harmonic range, returning to the tonic E-flat every fourth measure. The first thirty-six bars, in fact, might experiment with a seeming stasis of parallel scales whose third repetition enjoys a songlike character in C Major. Ensuing upon some variants, Beethoven does in fact ground his Allegro in C Major. Jabbing accents and a galloping tempo define this episode, but the gentle, rocking opening returns in the left […]
Artur Schnabel: Beethoven Birthday Salute!
Streams and Podcasts for 17 December 2017 Artur Schnabel: Beethoven Birthday Salute! That all so distinguished pianist Artur Schnabel will be featured on this week’s show of The Music Treasury, broadcast on Sunday evenings in the Bay Area, as well as streaming on the ‘Net. While an exceptional pianist renowned for his performances of composers from Bach through Brahms, he is particularly noted for his attention to the works of Beethoven. For a time in the 1900s, Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas were fading from public attention; Schnabel championed them tirelessly, becoming the first artist to record the entire cycle of the sonatas. The show will feature exclusively works of Beethoven, ranging from some of his earliest to some of his latest… sonatas, fantasias, capriccios, as well as one duet —his final Violin Sonata, performed with Joseph Szigeti. Dr Gary Lemco hosts the show, which can be heard on 17 December, 2017—not so coincidentally, Beethoven’s Baptismal Day (the day after his birthday)! It is aired as a radio show at KZSU from Stanford between 19:00 and 21:00 PST, as well a streaming broadcast in parallel through kzsulive.stanford.edu.
BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonatas Nos. 3, 14, 23, 26, 32; Variations on an Original Theme – Evgeny Kissin, piano – DGG
BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata in C Major, Op. 2, No. 3; 32 Variations on an Original Theme in c minor, WoO 80; Piano Sonata No. 14 in c-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2 “Moonlight”; Piano Sonata No. 23 in f minor, Op. 57 “Appassionata”; Piano Sonata No. 26 in E-flat Major, Op. 81a “Les Adieux”; Piano Sonata No. 32 in c minor, Op. 111 – Evgeny Kissin, piano – DGG 479 7581 (2 CDs) 55:40; 73:14 (9/8/17) [Distr. by Universal] *****: Evgeny’s Kissin’s Beethoven exploration, 2006-2016, reveals a mature thinker in music with ideas of his own. Russian virtuoso Evgeny Kissin (b. 1971) has assembled performances of Beethoven he deems significant in his artistic development, culled from various sources, 2006-2016. Indeed, the musicality revealed in these performances bespeaks a thoughtful, matured artist, for whom restraint and tasteful execution has become an integral part of a technical arsenal that had already achieved bravura status. Kissin opens from Seoul, 2006, with the 1795 Sonata in C Major, a clear, often bold, statement of the composer’s virtuosic ambitions, even as it experiments with a narrow melodic tessitura, based on conjunct intervals. The placement of the second subject in g minor must have raised eyebrows […]
Final Thoughts: The Last Piano Works of BRAHMS and SCHUBERT = BRAHMS: Piano Pieces, Op. 116 through 119; SCHUBERT: Piano Sonatas D. 959, D. 960 – Jorge Federico Osorio (p.) – Cedille
Final Thoughts: The Last Piano Works of BRAHMS and SCHUBERT = BRAHMS: Piano Pieces, Op. 116, 117, 118, 119; SCHUBERT: Piano Sonata in A Major, D. 959; Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960 – Jorge Federico Osorio, piano – Cedille CDR 9000 171 (2 CDs) 77:02; 79:24 (5/12/17) [Distr. by Naxos] **** Jorge Federico Osorio invests an ardor of personal authenticity into the late works of Schubert and Brahms. I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Mexican piano virtuoso Jorge Federico Osorio (b. 1951) in concert some years ago in San Jose’s Mexican Heritage Center, and I recall having been impressed with his magnificent technique, poise, and security in the repertory of his choice. In this ambitious album (rec. 27-30 June and 26 July 2016), Osorio approaches two composers in their maturity, although ascribing that term to youthful Franz Schubert, aged thirty-one, besets us with manifold ironies. The magnificent 1828 A Major Sonata, D. 959, for instance, combines an exalted lyricism with a breadth of interior turmoil, marked by circuitous harmonic ventures. Osorio plays the expansive first movement Allegro with a bright, forward motion, eschewing over-wrought dramatic ploys and padding so as to address directly the tensions inherent in […]
HAYDN: Piano Sonatas Not. 3l, 33, 47 & 58 – John O’Conor, p. – Steinway
John O’Conor deftly brings out the variety and infinite charm of five Haydn sonatas. HAYDN: Piano Sonata No. 47 in b; Piano Sonata No. 38 in F Major; Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major; Piano Sonata No. 33 in c; Piano Sonata No. 58 in C Major – John O’Conor, p. – Steinway & Sons 30058, 69:51 (11/20/16) [Distr. by Naxos] ****: Irish piano virtuoso John O’Conor (b. 1947) has assembled a delectable group of five Haydn sonatas, composed 1767 and 1789, that display his thorough knowledge of keyboard technique and his infinite capacity for musical invention. Each of the sonatas basks in any number of variations in the course of its development, a brilliant testimony to a musical imagination in ceaseless experiment with the instrument at hand and its ability to generate sensuous form. O’Conor opens with the 1776 Sonata in b minor, one of a set published as the composer’s Op. 14. While something of Scarlatti begins the procession, the writing becomes what one scholar, H.C. Robbins Landon, calls more “expressionistic.” Sojourns into major and minor modes alternate, all accompanied by O’Conor’s jeu perle tones on his chosen Steinway instrument. At several points, the bass tones resonate […]
HAYDN: Piano Sonatas and Variations = Lars Haugbro, fortepiano ‒ LAWO
HAYDN: Piano Sonatas and Variations = Sonata in F Major, Hob. XVI:29; Andante and Variations in F Minor, Hob. XVII:6; Sonata in C Minor, Hob. XVI:20; Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:50 ‒ Lars Haugbro, fortepiano ‒ LAWO LWC1094; 67:46 (5/6/16) *****: A nicely-varied recital from a Scandinavian Haydn specialist. B01AB6UNWM Despite the highly evocative cover photo, this album is not all storms-a-brewing. However, two of the works on this varied program tap into the darker side of Haydn, one not often encountered since his latest, greatest works are usually in a sunny major mode. Of Haydn’s late large-scale compositions, consider that his greatest symphonic creations, the twelve London Symphonies, include only one work in a minor key, Symphony No. 95 in c. It is perhaps the least admired of the twelve, and as to its key signature, critics generally conclude that here Haydn is more interested in the minor key as a matter of sonority than as a matter of spiritual-emotional context, as it was in the great c minor works of Mozart and Beethoven. Then again, in that same decade we have the marvelous Lord Nelson Mass, or Missa in Angustiis, written during the frightening early years of […]
SCHUBERT: Piano Sonatas: No. 18 in G; No. 20 – David Korevaar, p. – MSR Classics
David Koervaar provides an intimate and almost intrusive glimpse into these late Schubert works. SCHUBERT: Piano Sonatas: No. 18 in G, D.894; No. 20 in A, D.959 – David Korevaar, p. – MSR Classics MS 1557, 71:37 [Distr. by Albany] ****: Korevaar, currently at University of Colorado Boulder (where this was recorded), is a wide-spectrum type of pianist who nevertheless brings a certainly stylistic sensibility to everything he records. One criticism that is often leveled at actors, for instance, is that in every role they play we discern the personality first and the character second. In music however, this is not a bad thing. One is never able to recreate, despite the best of intentions, who the “real” Beethoven or Mozart is, let alone the “true intentions” (whatever that means) of the composer. Interpretative musical art will always be a best guess scenario, and the re-creative aspects of musical performance dictate that each and every effort is in some way the union of multiple—and often disparate—musical personalities. I say this because Korevaar is an artist whose human sensibilities, no matter what he is playing, are always at the forefront. He seem anxious to communicate to us the deeply personal elements […]
“A Beethoven Odyssey”, Vol. 4 = Piano Sonatas: No. 9 in E; No. 15 in D, “A Therese”; No. 25 in G – James Brawn, p. – MSR Classics
It’s becoming repetitive to speak about the high quality of this series.
MOZART: Piano Concertos – The Complete Studio Recordings, 1933-1947; Sel. Piano Sonatas, Rondos, and Fantasias; HAYDN: Piano Concerto in D – Edwin Fischer, p. and cond./ London Philharmonic Orch./ Edwin Fischer Ch. Orch./ Lawrance Collingwood (K. 491)/ John Barbirolli (K. 482)/ Philharmonia Orch./ Josef Krips (K. 503)/ Vienna Philharmonic Orch. (Haydn) – APR (3 CDs)
Mozart advocate and brilliant keyboardist Edwin Fischer and a compendium of his commercial inscriptions.
RACHMANINOV: Piano Concerto No. 2; Piano Concerto No. 3 in d minor – Stewart Goodyear, p./ Czech Nat. Sym./ Heiko Mathias Foerster – Steinway & Sons
Canadian virtuoso Stewart Goodyear devotes his considerable gifts to the two dominant Rachmaninov concertos with potent results.
HINDEMITH: Piano Sonatas 1 – 3; Suite “1922” – David Korevaar, p. – MSR Classics
Ecstatic Hindemith worth every penny.
MOZART: Piano Sonatas – Marc-Andre Hamelin, p. – Hyperion (2 CDS)
Elegantly and intelligently mounted, this compilation of nine Mozart sonatas and selected solo works showcases Hamelin’s pearly musicianship.
ULLMANN: The Complete Works for Piano Solo = Piano Sonatas Nos. 1 thru 7; Variations & Double Fugue – Christophe Sirodeau, p. – BIS (2 CDs)
Virtuoso Christophe Sirodeau aids in the “rediscovery” of Holocaust composer Viktor Ullmann, whom Sirodeau celebrates as hero, not victim.
“A Beethoven Odyssey”, Vol. 3 = Piano Sonatas: No. 2 in A; No. 17, “The Tempest”; No. 26 in E-flat, “Les Adieux” – James Brawn, p. – MSR Classics
Volume 3 of James Brawn’s series moves him back into the realm of sublime.
SCHUBERT: The Late Piano Sonatas = Sonata in A Minor; Sonata in C Minor; Sonata in A Major; Sonata in B-flat Major – Paul Lewis, p. – Harmonia mundi (2 CDs)
Though recorded some twelve years apart, Paul Lewis remains consistent in his nobly introspective vision of the late Schubert sonatas.
CLEMENTI: Piano Sonatas, in g; in C; in g; in G – Ian Hominick, p. – MSR Classics
Unearthing music from a man once considered a consummate master.
BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 3 = Piano Sonata No. 15 in D Major, “Pastorale”; Piano Sonata No. 16 in G Major; Piano Sonata No. 21 in C Major, “Waldstein” – Jonathan Biss, p. – Onyx
Jonathan Biss extends his persuasive grasp of the Beethoven sonatas with three works from Beethoven’s “new path” period.
Stereotypes Audio
Cembal d’amour
Pure Pleasure / Speakers Corner
Cedille
