Barry Douglas - Works for Solo Piano 1 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Helmuth Rilling is an internationally renowned German choral conductor. He is the founder of the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, the Oregon Bach Festival, and the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart. A heavily awarded conductor, he has a Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance in 2001, and he was the 2011 recipient of the Herbert von Karajan Music Prize.

For his fifth volume of Schubert's piano works, Barry Douglas turns to a contrasting pair of sonatas composed in the 1820s. The A minor, from 1823, was composed whilst he suffered an episode of depression following the onset (and harsh treatment for) syphilis. The D major sonata, however, was written in 1825 on a holiday to Gastein in the Austrian Alps, and is musically more confident and extravert, reminiscent of the 'Great' C major Symphony, begun during the same trip. Douglas completes his programme with a pair of Liszt transcriptions from Schwanengesang 'Liebesbotschaft' and 'Ständchen'. As with the other volumes in this series, Barry Douglas plays a Steinway Model D, and the recording was made in the Curtis Auditorium of the CIT Cork School of Music.

This sixth volume in Barry Douglas's acclaimed Schubert series features two major works. The Sonata in A minor, D 845 was completed in 1825, just before Schubert started work on his 'great' Symphony in C major. As in so much of his later writing, Schubert is pushing at the boundaries of sonata form, particularly in terms of the harmonic variation he introduces throughout the piece. The second movement takes the form of a theme and variations, as does the third piece of the second major work on the album, the Four Impromptus, D 935. Published after his death in 1828, they were composed in 1827 and, like the Sonata, show all the trademarks of late Schubert. The program is completed with Liszt's transcription of Schubert's 'Ave Maria' - a sparklingly virtuosic homage to this famous theme, demonstrating once again Barry Douglas's extraordinary technical facility. The album was recorded on a Steinway model D in the Curtis auditorium of the MTU Cork School of Music in Ireland.