Liszt: Piano Sonata & other works

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FRANZ LISZT
Liszt: Piano Sonata & other works
Angela Hewitt (piano)

[ Hyperion / CD ]

Release Date: Sunday 1 February 2015

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Angela Hewitt's notes for this important new album describe a teenager's moment of revelation when she first came to appreciate the epic masterpiece that is the Liszt Piano Sonata. Here we have a heart-felt recording where this palpable sense of wonder is manifest alongside Hewitt's enthralling technical facility at the keyboard.

The programme is completed by the second half of Liszt's dazzling second Année de pèlerinage collection: the three Petrarch Sonnets and the noble Dante Sonata, the latter composed as a fund-raiser for the Bonn Beethoven monument in 1839.

"Too many pianists transform the Dante Sonata into an interminable octave and tremolo study. Hewitt, of course, will have none of that. She brilliantly calibrates and orchestrates the often blocky textures with multi-leveled specificity of color, nuance, balance, and dynamic scaling." (ClassicsToday Feb 2015)

"Hewitt has a refreshing attitude to Liszt...Virtuosity is only the start [of the Dante Sonata]. Here, in the B minor sonata and in the three youthful Petrarch Sonnets, Hewitt is magisterial. For many years Bach has been her calling card. Her Liszt is, if anything, yet more compelling." The Observer, 1st February 2015 ****

"Hewitt's Liszt interpretations are both exquisite and dramatic, at once finely thought-out and exalting. From the first bar, the Sonata is invested with a freshness...Wise long pauses are left between items, time in which to forget every music you ever knew." Sunday Times, 8th February 2015

"Elegant and immaculate in both musicianship and platform wardrobe, the pianist Angela Hewitt doesn't immediately rush to mind when considering the wild music of Liszt...Even if her approach sometimes rubs against the music's grain, the poise and clarity of her textures and phrasings still brings major pleasures." The Times, 6th February 2015 ****

Tracks:

Piano Sonata in B minor, S178
Sonetto 47 del Petrarca (Années de pèlerinage II, S. 161 No. 4)
Sonetto 104 del Petrarca (Années de pèlerinage II, S. 161 No. 5)
Sonetto 123 del Petrarca (Années de pèlerinage II, S. 161 No. 6)
Après une lecture du Dante, fantasia quasi sonata (Années de pèlerinage II, S. 161 No. 7)