Jenny Soonjin Kim - Complete Keyboard Sonatas 4 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Leopold Koželuch (1747-1818) was a Bohemian composer-pianist who moved to Vienna in 1778, three years before Mozart settled there. The sonatas (49 in total) share qualities with the work of his teacher Dussek, and Burney's contemporary assessment of Kozeluch's music stands true today 'natural, graceful and flowing, without imitating any great model, as almost all his contemporaries have done. His modulation is natural and pleasing... His rhythm is well phrased, his accents well placed, and harmony pure.' Volume 3 covers Sonatas Nos.17-33, written between 1785 and 1791. No less than Haydn's work in the genre, they invent ever-new and imaginative forms. The two-movement No.18 contrasts a gentle set of variations with a dashing Allegro; the three-movement No.19 in F minor opens with a grave slow movement introducing a passionate, exploratory Allegro agitato; the A major No.20 returns to the free-spirited pastoral idiom of Kozeluch's background, with a lilting opening Allegro, a reflective but smiling Adagio and freewheeling finale. Such variety of form and temperament continues throughout the collection. 'Jenny Soonjin Kim plays with an almost Baroque flair well-fitting of the music... The period treatment that Kim brings to the kozeluch Koželuch sonatas gives them a crisp texture and very nearly tactile character... Kim's performance is commanding and authoritative. The sonics are superb... an inspired and inspiring collection.' (All About Jazz, reviewing volume 1) 'Kim's playing is crystalline and lyrical, with exquisitely sensitive phrasing. She is an assured virtuoso who interprets Koželuch's music beautifully. This set will interest pianists who would like to augment their repertoire with unknown gems from the period.' (Early Music America) On this album Jenny Soonjin Kim plays a modern German copy of an Anton Walter fortepiano made in Vienna in 1795.

Despite his present-day obscurity, during his lifetime Leopold Kozeluch was held in just as high esteem as his contemporaries C.P.E. Bach, Haydn and Beethoven, with some accounts praising him as a more proficient musician than Mozart. At last his music is beginning to attract modern attention, with a large number of scholarly articles and editions having been published in recent years. This is the first in a new series presenting his keyboard sonatas in full, works which are without doubt the most interesting facet of his output. Kozeluch wrote over 50 sonatas, the first eight of which are presented here. A composer very much of the Classical tradition, he employs all of the devices typical of this period - broken-chord accompaniments, tremolos, repeated notes and expressive chromaticism - to create a variety of works that are noteworthy for their subtly different emotional shadings and sheer beauty of melodic material, albeit with a deceptively simple quality that makes them all the more memorable. This recording uses a fortepiano, carefully modelled after a 1795 instrument from Vienna that Kozeluch himself could well have played on, which allows for a highly authentic listening experience. Indeed, Kozeluch was a champion of the fortepiano, and these works effectively detail the pioneering compositional style that was permeating keyboard music in Vienna at the time, a style whose development Kozeluch played such an important role in. An international artist who regularly performs music ranging from Bach to Schoenberg in major venues across Europe, Asia and North America, Jenny Soonjin Kim is also a faculty member at Claremont Graduate University in California (the venue for this recording), where she teaches piano and fortepiano. It is her keen interest in scholarship - particularly historical performance practice - that led to her discovery of Kozeluch; as a speci

Lomond Campbell - UNDER THIS HUNGER MOON WE FELL [VINYL LP] date 11/04/2022