Reinagle Archive

American First Sonatas – Sonatas by REINAGLE, MACDOWELL, GRIFFES & SIEGMEISTER – Cecile Licad, p. – Danacord

by Audiophile Audition | Dec 20, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews

Cecile Licad embarks on a fine tour of first American piano sonatas, our home-spun answer to European models.  American First Sonatas – REINAGLE: Philadelphia Sonata No. 1 in D Major; MACDOWELL: Piano Sonata No. 1 in g, Op. 45 “Tragica”; GRIFFES: Sonata for Piano; SIEGMEISTER: American Sonata (No. 1) – Cecile Licad, p. – Danacord DACOCD 774, 71:04 (6/6/16)  [Distr. by Albany] *****:  Danacord has initiated “The Anthology of American Piano Music,” a series designed “to show the stylistic breadth, high musical quality and great originality of the best American piano works. The series contains underrated, neglected or forgotten masterworks of the American literature for solo piano…selected primarily for their musical worth.” Philippines-born Cecile Licad (b. 1961), a pupil at the Curtis Institute of such luminaries as Rudolf Serkin, Seymour Lipkin, and Mieczyslaw Horszowski, employs her prodigious gifts (rec. 1-3 July 2015) in the service of four such neglected works, of which the Sonata in D by Alexander Reinagle constitutes the first piano sonata to be composed in North America (1786). Reinagle (1856-1809) shares a birth year with Mozart and the year of his death coincides with that of Haydn. Educated in music at Edinburgh, Scotland, he became a member […]