Dussek / Oort - Complete Piano Sonatas 1 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Wolfgang Brunner presents two opus numbers composed by Dussek in 1792 and 1800, around the time of the beginning and then the painful end of his marriage to the singer and harpist Sophia Corri. The comparatively early Op.18 No.2 shares the modest dimensions of Haydn's early keyboard sonatas, though by then Dussek was 32 years old and Haydn had already paid fulsome tribute to the younger man's 'remarkable talents'. Upon his marriage to Sophia he ran a moderately successful music publishing firm with his new father-in-law, Domenico Corri, but when the firm went bust late in 1799 Dussek abandoned Sophia and their daughter and fled to Hamburg; during the following year he wrote a trio of sonatas published in 1802 as Op.45. These are all more ambitious in scale and expressive reach. The slow movement of Op.45 No.1 bears the significant marking of Adagio patetico, and it explores reaches of grave feeling through harmonies in advance of their time. The two-movement Op.45 No.2 opens with a Larghetto sostenuto of grave concentration, though the mood is lifted by a gently circular, almost Schubertian Andantino. A lighter, more cheerful character pervades the D major Sonata Op.45 No.3, which concludes with one of the effervescent Rondos for which Dussek was celebrated in his own lifetime. On this recording Wolfgang Brunner plays a pair of instruments from Dussek's time an 1804 Broadwood, and a modern copy of a Viennese fortepiano originally made around 1810 by Michael Rosenberger. Once complete, the cycle will form the first-ever recording of Dussek's sonatas on historically appropriate instruments.

These sonatas date from a high-point in the career of the Czech-born Jan Ladislaus Dussek (1760-1812), at a time when he was established in London as a sought-after performer and fashionable piano teacher. His partnership with the instrument-maker John Broadwood resulted in significant technical developments to the fortepiano which would be imitated abroad and capitalized upon in Vienna by Beethoven, notably the extra power and larger range. The Sonata Op.25 No.2 in D has become famous under the name 'La Matinée' a subtitle work that conveys the lively spirit of the sonata and it's irresistible sense of good cheer even in the lyric simplicity of the third-movement Larghetto. The three Op.39 sonatas are more elaborate in conception and design without forsaking the earlier work's transparency and grace. The first movements of Op.39 abound in brilliant figuration, which evidently played to the composer's strengths as a performer, but they are strongly rooted in a sonata-form structure which contrasts a pressing and vivacious first theme with the more tripping, light-hearted character of the second. The concluding Rondos tend to be the highlight, alternating some surprisingly passionate and even stormy episodes with the kind of unpretentious folk-like theme that Schubert would go on to perfect. This is the second in a projected eight-album series to be published by Brilliant Classics, surveying the complete keyboard sonatas of Dussek. The series was launched in fine style by the Dutch fortepianist Bart van Oort, and it is attracting much critical attention which this addition to the series is sure to share. Born in 1972, Piet Kuijken has been professor of piano and fortepiano at the Royal Conservatoire in Brussels since 2002 and is a guest professor for the fortepiano at the Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp. Album Tracks 1. I. Adagio Maestoso - Presto 2. II. Larghe

Brilliant's critically acclaimed Dussek sonata cycle continues with a pairing of early and late works. Viviana Sofronitsky, daughter of the great Russian pianist Vladimir Sofronitsky, followed in her father's footsteps by becoming a 'formidable pianist' (Fanfare). Early years in Russia were followed by a move to the United States to study early music at Oberlin Conservatory and further studies in fortepiano and harpsichord at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. An active performing career across Europe - from Leipzig and Utrecht to Oslo and London - included competition prizes at the Bach Tage Berlin and the Musica Antiqua competition in Bruges. Her discography includes solo music by Schubert and the complete piano concertos of Mozart, which drew praise for her 'superb articulation' in Fanfare. As on those earlier albums she plays a modern fortepiano by Paul McNulty, based on a Viennese model by Anton Walter, for these new recordings of sonatas by the Czech-born contemporary of Beethoven, Johann Ladislaus Dussek. The three sonatas gathered under Opus 9 are arrangements of works originally conceived for piano and violin most of the violin's melody line was originally doubled by the right-hand part of the piano, making the transformation from chamber to solo work seamless and straightforward, and the character of these late-18th-century works corresponds to similarly conceived violin sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven, where the spotlight falls on the keyboard. So it does in a quite different fashion in the penultimate piano sonata by Dussek, Op.75, which is cast in an early-Romantic vein. An expansive first movement is led by a gentle, exploratory opening melody which fractures and multiplies into passionate figuration across the entire range of the keyboard, and back again the journey from Beethoven to Schubert in a nutshell. This is followed by a stately, minuet-like