This album features three first-rate, greatly underperformed, Italian Sonatas for Violin and Piano. Respighi, Martucci, and Rota are all three wonderful composers, and it shows clearly in these works. Italian artists Fabrizio Falasca and Antonio Pompa-Baldi infuse these three great works with the life they deserve.
Angela Hewitt's voyage of discovery through Mozart's piano sonatas is proving a joy, the works sounding newly minted in vital, alert accounts which respect their scale and sensibility while revealing influences of Mozart's orchestral and concerto writing of the period.
A luxury-grade vinyl transfer in a gatefold 2LP set for a beautifully engineered 2021 album of Scarlatti on the piano from a master German pianist. On its CD release in 2022, this personal choice from Scarlatti’s 555 keyboard sonatas won an enthusiastic welcome from Gramophone. ‘Contrasts of mood together with unified relationships of tempo and key signature characterise one the most intelligently programmed and distinctively played Scarlatti collections to cross my reviewer’s desk in years.’
Hardly less than Bach, these sonatas have become for many pianists a proving ground for their own technique and imagination, rewarding an improvisatory response to their flamboyant effects. Schmitt-Leonardy also features several of Scarlatti’s most poetic and reflective sonatas such as the ‘Aria’ Kk 29 and the melancholy soliloquy of Kk 208. The approach taken by Schmitt-Leonardy is always ‘pianistic’, in that he exploits the full tonal resources of a modern concert grand. Yet his phrasing is also sensitive to 18th-century style and to the kind of effects and articulation particular to the harpsichord for which Scarlatti was writing. ‘Kaleidoscopic nuances and dynamic gradations abound throughout the E major Kk135,’ continued the Gramophone reviewer Jed Distler, the Gramophone reviewer Jed Distler, ‘but not garishly so. Nor does the pianist’s curvaceous and tapered phrasing throughout the A major Kk322 lapse into mannerism or cliché.’ As with all Brilliant Classics and Piano Classics LPs, this set is issued on 180-gram, high-grade vinyl pressed at the Optimal factory in Hamburg. Its audiophile quality is worthy of performances which bear comparison with great Scarlatti performers of past and present from Horowitz to Pletnev. Inner-sleeve booklet notes by Peter Quantrill discuss each of the sonatas in turn.
In this third volume of his acclaimed Beethoven fortepiano cycle, Roberto Prosseda explores four early piano sonatas composed between 1796 and 1799, including the iconic Pathetique Sonata, the expansive Op. 7, and the intimate Op. 49 sonatas. Performing on an original 1820 Conrad Graf fortepiano, Prosseda reveals a Beethoven who is bold, unpredictable, and deeply theatrical - an improviser whose music breathes with rhetorical power, expressive contrasts, and remarkable spontaneity. Rather than seeking historical reconstruction, this recording offers a fresh rediscovery of Beethoven's creative imagination through the distinctive colours and responsiveness of one of the finest surviving instruments of it's kind. Recorded at the renowned Musicafelix Studio in Prato, Italy, this album benefits from an exceptional acoustic environment that beautifully captures the fortepiano's unique palette of transparent bass, eloquent middle register, and crystalline treble. Together, Prosseda's insightful interpretation and the studio's natural sound create an immersive listening experience that brings Beethoven's early masterpieces vividly to life, balancing architectural grandeur with poetic intimacy. 'I continue to perceive a remarkably living presence: a Beethoven who improvises, experiments, and takes risks.' - Roberto Prosseda
This 2CD set represents the first release on TACET of what will ultimately become a complete recordings project of Domenico Scarlatti's 555 keyboard sonatas. Pianist Christopf Ullrich, a prolific recording artist whose embarked on other projects of this or similar kinds, sets out in this extended journey with 30 Essercizi and 12 Sonatas.
On this double SACD, "Paths into Impressionism" are taken: starting with the two important Sonatas for Violin and Piano by Gabriel Faure, the first of which was already described as a masterpiece by Camille Saint-Saens, and four other short pieces by Faure, the great Salzburg violinist Thomas Albertus Irnberger and the German pianist Michael Korstick, who is already very familiar with the French idiom through many of his own recordings, present further works from the French and Belgian repertoire in their usual masterly and spirited interpretations: the Sonata by the early deceased Guillaume Lekeu, which was commissioned and premiered by Eugene Ysaÿe, and Maurice Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Piano (with a Blues as the middle movement), which is characterized by Ravel's view that violin and piano were fundamentally incompatible. The resulting manifold parallel developments and bitonal frictions create specific stimuli, though without showing even the slightest hint of the music falling apart. Ravel's "Kaddish" and the "Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Faure", dedicated to his teacher, can also be heard, as well as the Sonata by Francis Poulenc, written in collaboration with Ginette Neveu and dedicated posthumously to Federico Garcia Lorca, and the fascinating work "Theme et variations" by Olivier Messiaen, which he dedicated to his first wife, a violinist, and which still contains many impressionistic elements.
Beethoven's five cello sonatas are the quintessence of his personality and work: they exemplify the creative development of this great composer who is perhaps even more relevant in our modern, ephemeral society in which little time is left for reflection. + Cellist Maja Weber and pianist Per Lundberg have been playing chamber music together for more than twenty years, mostly in piano quartets and quintets. + The idea of forming "Duo Leonore" was thus a natural consequence of their working together.
Beethoven's first Sonatas for violin and piano Op. 12/1-3, composed during the years 1797 and 1798, contain unmistakable elements of his later composition style, which challenged his contemporaries’ critical taste accordingly. The violin sonatas No. 4 Op. 23 and No. 5 Op. 24 and their composition correlate, according to findings of musicologists, closely with Beethoven’s own relationships. The former one seems to portray the darker side of love, its unfulfillment, whereas the later so-called ‘spring sonata’ – as a sort of characterization of a loving heart’s feeling of spring – references the sweet, beautiful aspects of love. The three sonatas Op. 30/1-3, composed in 1802, the year when he also wrote the ‘Heiligenstädter Testament’, reflect Beethoven’s emotional state and are characterized by heavy mood swings. Maybe the most famous work is the ‘Kreutzer’ sonata No. 9 in A major Op. 47, once termed unplayable by its dedicatee, the French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer. By contrast, Beethoven’s final violin sonata No. 10 in G major Op. 96 seems more heartfelt in tone and was praised by critics as the ‘most poetic and musically most sensitively crafted’ of his sonatas. Thomas Albertus Irnberger and Michael Korstick furthermore present the variations ‘Se vuol ballare’ WoO 40 on a theme from the opera Le nozze di Figaro by W. A. Mozart. The Rondo in G major, WoO 41, and the Six German Dances, WoO 42, were written in 1794/96 and convey ease and almost juvenile cheerfulness – a trait also prevalent in the interpretation of Irnberger and Korstick.
The first works of Cage are experimental and related to the future. "The Future of Music" - a Credo" is the title of his first manifesto, and this future bears the name "all-sound music". Peter Roggenkamp: piano / Schola Cantorum Stuttgart / Clytus Gottwald: conductor / John Cage: speaking part.
Beethoven's three Sonatas Op. 10, written between 1796 and 1798, mark a decisive step from the Classical clarity of Haydn and Mozart toward a bolder, more individual language. Each sonata displays a distinct character: the C minor No. 1 combines tragic urgency with structural concentration; the F major No. 2 reveals Beethoven's emerging humor and rhythmic invention; and the expansive D major No. 3 unfolds an unprecedented emotional and architectural scale, crowned by the visionary Largo e mesto. The unifying rhythmic motif of "short-long" pulses through the set, foreshadowing the composer's later dramas. Performed on an 1820 Conrad Graf fortepiano, Roberto Prosseda's interpretation restores the music's raw contrasts, speaking timbres, and anti-rhetorical gestures that modern pianos often smooth away. In his personal note, Prosseda explains how returning to these works on a historical instrument transformed his understanding of Beethoven's expression. The fortepiano's transparency, differentiated registers, and responsive mechanism invite a freer phrasing and more rhetorical, speech-like delivery. He aims not for novelty but sincerity-seeking to rediscover familiar music through it's original sound world. Prosseda is one of Italy's leading pianists with a distinguished career, celebrated for his complete Mendelssohn and Mozart recordings and for reviving the pedal piano. This Beethoven Op. 10 album follows his acclaimed Op. 2 set for Challenge Classics, continuing his exploration of early Beethoven on period instruments.
Including recently discovered works recorded here for the first time. Première Recording* For the first release, Cello Classics has chosen to bring out something of a coup, in hitherto unplayed works by the first great composer for the cello to achieve universal recognition, Luigi Boccherini. Three of the sonatas on this disc have been obtained from manuscripts until recently in a private collection, and provide a wonderful addition to the classical cello repertoire. Sebastian Comberti has been involved in the period instrument revival in London since the early 1980s and has made the study of late 18th Century cello repertoire something of a speciality. This recording has been made using original instruments with a continuo team unusually comprising archlute/guitar and cello, providing a rich and yet light accompaniment to these delightful works. It is bound to be of interest to lovers of the cello and scholars alike
On their third CD, the outstanding concertante duo Reinhold Friedrich & Eriko Takezawa bring to life music that has hitherto lain dormant or not yet appeared in a deservedly splendid light. In their new CD production, the two exceptional artists present three new discoveries by Alexander Albrecht, Boris Asafiew and Harold Shapero, which are of the utmost importance for the trumpet-piano repertoire. Also noteworthy are the three important repertoire works, the sonatas by Thorwald Hansen, Jean Hubeau and George Antheil, which shine in completely new splendour here. The works are all set between the end of the Romantic period and the transition to the modern era. One can already speak of a historically important recording, as this is the last CD production in the "old" Hans Rosbaud Studio in Baden-Baden before the building was demolished. This acoustically valuable space was home to the great and greatest composers of our time - from Olivier Messiaen to Jorg Widmann, from Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Karlheinz Stockhausen to Peter Eotvos and Wolfgang Rihm. This album Sonatae e Variacie certainly has the potential to become a milestone in the repertoire for trumpet and piano.
