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SOMM JUNE RELEASE: SOMMCD 259 

Release date: 29 April 2016

PROKOFIEV PIANO SONATAS VOL. 3, The “War Sonatas”, Nos, 6, 7 & 8

Peter Donohoe – piano

“Donohoe’s authoritative playing shines through in every work — he has lived with these pieces for a long time… In his hands every sonata makes a memorable impression, and the Fifth receives one of the finest performances I have encountered on disc. A wonderful anthology. Next instalment, please!”   Classical Ear (of Vol. I).

“The recording is exemplary, fully projecting Donohoe’s massive dynamic range. The finale of the Second Sonata epitomises all that is Prokofiev, and, in Donohoe, all that is great Prokofiev playing… The helter-skelter character of No. 3 is perfectly conveyed through Donohoe’s impressive technique. There are performances of both No. 2 and No. 3 by Gilels in existence, and Donohoe loses little in that exalted company. It is No. 4 that is the highlight, though, a performance of magisterial intensity. No. 5 receives a performance of the utmost integrity. Magnificent” . International Piano (of Vol. I).

“This intelligently planned programme is played by musicians fully attuned to Prokofiev’s expressive lyricism and humour… Raphael Wallfisch and Peter Donohoe give the music’s opening narrative a compelling sense of direction, making the gentle, inward quality of the exposition’s end all the more captivating.” *****  BBC Music Magazine (of Vol. II).

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This is the third and final volume in Peter Donohoe’s highly-praised recordings of the complete Piano Sonatas of Sergei Prokofiev and SOMM are proud to have been able to capture his mature interpretative thoughts on the composer’s War Trilogy. Prokofiev was a magnificent pianist and, like so many of his predecessors and contemporaries, he would often reserve his most personal and intimate thoughts to the music he wrote for his own instrument. Sonatas Nos. 6, 7 and 8, written consecutively during World War II, reflecting on and reacting to the horrors of what was referred to in Soviet Russia during their titanic struggle against Hitler as the ‘Great Patriotic War’, drew from Prokofiev some of his greatest music, expressed through his own instrument, the piano, producing in the central sonata of the trilogy, No. 7, his most famous and brilliant piano music, with the exciting finale marked Precipitato (impetuous, headlong) depicting the ferocity and grit of the Russian attacks on the Nazi army. The beautiful Sixth Sonata is more personal and inward-looking, contemplative and moving, and the Eighth looks forward to a post-war world in which all conflict on Russian soil will have ceased.

Peter Donohoe has always been closely attuned to Russian music and particularly that of Prokofiev and his recordings of the War Trilogy go back more than 30 years. He first recorded the 7th Sonata in 1982 for HMV then again in 1991 together with the two other “War Sonatas”, 6 and 8 for EMI. He believes that Prokofiev’s Sonatas form one of the greatest piano solo cycles in the repertoire. ‘Prokofiev was creating these major works throughout his career — all of them are major and some are still underrated and I am delighted to have had the chance of recording, on SOMM, the complete cycle at last.’

Tracklisting:

Piano Sonata No. 6 in A, Op. 82 (1940)

[1[ 1. Allegro moderato

[2] 2. Allegretto

[3] 3. Tempo di valzer , lentissimo

[4] 4. Vivace

Piano Sonata No. 7 in B flat, Op. 83 (1942)

[5] 1. Allegro inquieto — Poco meno — Andantino

[6] 2. Andante caloroso – Poco più animato – Più largamente – Un poco agitato

[7] 3. Precipitato

Piano Sonata No. 8 in B flat, Op. 84 (1944)

[8]  1. Andante dolce – Allegro moderato – Andante dolce come prima – Allegro

[9]  2. Andante sognando

[10]3. Vivace – Allegro ben marcato – Andantino – Vivace come prima

 

Peter Donohoe  – biography

Peter Donohoe was born in Manchester in 1953. He studied at Chetham’s School of Music, gratuated in music at Leeds University and went on to study at the Royal Northern College of Music with Derek Wyndham and then in Paris with Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod. He is acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time, for his musicianship, stylistic versatility and commanding technique.

Recent and forthcoming engagements include appearances with the Dresden Philharmonic, the BBC Concert Orchestra, RTE National Orchestra and CBSO (under Sir Simon Rattle), a UK tour with the Russian State Philharmonic Orchestra as well as concerts in South America, Europe, Hong Kong, South Korea, Russia and the USA. Other engagements include performances of all three MacMillan piano concertos with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, a series of concerts for the Ravel and Rachmaninov Festival at Bridgewater Hall alongside Noriko Ogawa, and performances with The Orchestra of the Swan. Donohoe is also in high demand as an adjudicator at piano competitions around the world, including the International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, Moscow, the Queen Elisabeth Competition, Belgium, and the Hong Kong International Piano Competition. Recent recordings include two discs of Prokofiev pianos sonatas for SOMM, the first of which Gramophone described as “devastatingly effective”, declaring Donohoe to be ” in his element”.  Other recordings include Cyril Scott’s Piano Concerto with the BBC Concert Orchestra under Martin Yates for Dutton and Malcolm Arnold’s Fantasy on a Theme of John Field with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Martin Yates, also for Dutton.

Donohoe has worked with many of the world’s greatest conductors including Christoph Eschenbach, Neeme Järvi, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Andrew Davis and Yevgeny Svetlanov. More recently he has appeared as soloist with the next generation of excellent conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel, Robin Ticciati and Daniel Harding.

Peter Donohoe is an honorary doctor of music at seven UK universities and was awarded a CBE for services to classical music in the 2010 New Year’s Honours List.

[Source: press release]

Meet the Artist……Peter Donohoe

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Olivier Messiaen’s monumental work Vingt Regards sur l’enfant Jésus (Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus) surely ranks amongst the “greats” of the piano repertoire, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas in terms of its scale, variety and pianistic challenges. It is one of the most ground-breaking works in 20th-century piano music, a work which has accrued iconic status and deep respect. It combines richly-hued romanticism and the spare modernism that influenced Messiaen’s pupil, Pierre Boulez, and reveals many of Messiaen’s preoccupations and interests – birdsong, eastern rhythms and instruments, cosmology, religious iconography and his own deeply-held Catholic faith.

French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard enjoys the special distinction of having known Messiaen personally, and he studied with Yvonne Loriod (who premiered the work in March 1945 and who became the composer’s second wife in 1961). Aimard has a long-standing and highly-respected relationship with Messiaen’s piano music and it remains a core part of his repertoire. He is also a champion of modern and contemporary piano repertoire, and as a result he brings to this music a special understanding of Messiaen’s unique approach to pitch, rhythm, sonority and attack.

Read my full review here

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by Dr Michael Low

A second article on this giant of piano music 

According to all reliable accounts, Liszt was the first true celebrity pianist in the history of Western art music. He was the embodiment of the Romantic Era: the sublime and the ridiculous, the diabolical and the virtuous, the transcendental and the mediocre, and no other composer in the 19th century had as diverse a compositional output. Liszt’s physical beauty, musical gift and striking stage persona combined for an intoxicating cocktail of the visionary, genius, sex, lust, snobbery, vanity, religion and literature. In short, he was Faust, Mephisto, Casanova, Byron, Mazeppa and St Francis all in one. Had cyberspace and social media existed in the 19th century, the tagline for Liszt would probably have been #Sex #Drugs #Classical Music #FranzLiszt.

Liszt was the first musician to have the piano placed in profile, so that the audience would be able to see his facial expression. He was also the first pianist to perform from memory, flouting the traditional view that to perform without music is a sign of disrespect to the composer. As a composer, Liszt’s output consists of over one thousand works. And until today only the Australian pianist Leslie Howard has recorded all of Liszt’s piano works (for Hyperion). Liszt’s one-movement symphonic poems, as well as the late piano pieces, were seen by many as works which were to have significant influence on the next generation of composers. Some argued that Liszt’s experimental use of harmonies (in particular in the late works) was prophetic in its foreshadowing of atonality, paving the way for the works of Scriabin, Debussy and Schoenberg in the early part of the 20th century.

LisztLiszt’s life and music have been the subject of numerous film adaptations. On one hand, Charles Vidor’s Song Without End (1960) won an Academy Award for Best Musical Score, as well as a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture. On the other hand, Ken Russell’s Lisztomania (1975), based on the novel Nélida, written by Liszt’s first important mistress, the Countess Marie d’Agoult, was notorious for its re-imagining of Wagner as a vampire (yes you read that correctly…) and its use of giant phalluses, reminiscent of Japan’s Shinto Kanamara Matsuri. One of the 20th century’s greatest pianist, Sviatoslav Richter, played the role of Franz Liszt in the 1952 Russian film entitled The Composer Glinka, while Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody in C Sharp Minor was immortalised by the evergreen animated duo of Tom and Jerry.

Recommended listening (all of which can be found on YouTube)

Années de Pèlerinage (Books 1 and 2): Lazar Berman

Vallée d’Obermann (from the 1st Book of Années de Pèlerinage): Claudio Arrau

Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este (from the 3rd Book of Années de Pèlerinage): Claudio Arrau

Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude (from Harmonies poétiques et religieuses): Claudio Arrau

Two Legends: St François d’Assise: La prédication aux oiseaux and St François de Paule marchant sur les flots: Alfred Brendel

Mephisto Waltz No. 1: Evgeny Kissin

Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C Sharp Minor: Benno Moiseiwitsch

Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6 in D Flat Major: Martha Argerich

Liebestraume No. 3 in A flat Major: Frederic Lamond

Études de concert No. 2 in F Minor (La leggierezza): Martha Argerich

Études de concert No.3 in D Flat Major (Un sospiro): Frederic Lamond

6 Grandes Études de Paganini: Andre Watts (Live Recording from Japan 1988)

12 Études d’exécution trancendente: Lazar Berman (Live Recording from Milan 1976)

12 Études d’exécution trancendente: Boris Berezovsky (Live Recording from Roque d’Antheron 2002)

Études d’exécution trancendente No. 5 in B Flat Major (Feux Follet): Vladimir Ashkenazy

Ballade No.2 in B Minor: Vladimir Horowitz (Live Recording from The Met 1981)

Piano Sonata in B minor: Mikhail Pletnev

Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Flat Major: Martha Argerich

Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major: Sviatoslav Richter

Piano Transcription of Beethoven’s An die Ferne Geliebte: Louis Lortie

Piano Transcription of Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture: Jorge Bolet

Piano Transcription of Isolde’s Liebestod (from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde): Michael Low

 

As a teenager, Michael Low studied piano under the guidance of Richard Frostick before enrolling in London’s prestigious Centre for Young Musicians, where he studied composition with the English composer Julian Grant, and piano with the internationally acclaimed pedagogue Graham Fitch. During his studies at Surrey University in England, Michael made his debut playing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto in the 1999 Guildford International Music Festival, before graduating with Honours under the tutelage of Clive Williamson. In 2000, Michael obtained his Masters in Music (also from Surrey University), specialising in music criticism, studio production and solo performance under Nils Franke. An international scholarship brought Michael to the University of Cape Town, where he resumed his studies with Graham Fitch. During this time, Michael was invited to perform Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto for The Penang Governer’s Birthday Celebration Gala Concert. In 2009, Michael obtained his Doctorate in Music from the University of Cape Town under the supervision of Hendrik Hofmeyr. His thesis set out to explore the Influence of Romanticism on the Evolution of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes. Michael has also worked with numerous eminent teachers and pianists, including Nina Svetlanova, Niel Immelman, Frank Heneghan, James Gibb, Phillip Fowke, Renna Kellaway, Carolina Oltsmann, Florian Uhlig, Gordon Fergus Thompson, Francois du Toit and Helena van Heerden.

Michael currently holds teaching positions in two of Cape Town’s exclusive education centres: Western Province Preparatory School and Herschel School for Girls. He is very much sought after as a passionate educator of young children.

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Korean pianist Sunwook Kim (born 1988) came to international prominence in 2006 when he won the Leeds International Piano Competition at the age of 18. Since then he has spent much time giving concerts and exploring repertoire, developing his own style, sound and ideas about the music he plays. By his own admission, he has now arrived at a point in his career and development as an artist where he feels ready to demonstrate “a more romantic, dramatic and yet refined pianism”. In doing so, his new CD, on the Accentus label, brings together two of his favourite works – Cesar Franck’s Prelude, Choral et Fugue and Johannes Brahms’ Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor. It is an unusual pairing, which reflects Sunwook’s interesting in programming, and in it he aims to show the link between the two composers, despite their stylistic differences: here are two composers, both pianists, who paid a special hommage to the music of the past. Both revered the spirit of Classicism and Bachian polyphony, as well as a love of proportion and well-ordered architectural structures within music. Thus, on this disc two great musical edifices are placed side by side, and the result is magisterial.

The Prelude, Choral et Fugue is the work of a composer at the height of his powers. Composed 1884, the work displays cyclic and thematic relationships, particularly in the recall of the Prelude and Choral in the Fugue, and the tripartite structure, probably inspired by Bach’s BWV 564, lends considerable weight and emotional power to the work. Franck was also an organist, and Sunwook Kim is sensitive to the full-bodied textures which recall the sonorities of the organ, while never comprising on clarity of tone and articulation. The work unfolds with a darkly dramatic grandeur, growing progressively more intense as the music approaches its denouement in the final passages of the Fugue. Such is Sunwook’s skilled sense of pacing that the opening Prelude in particular has the spontaneity and improvisatory qualities one expects to find in similar works by Bach. By the time we reach the central Choral, with its rich broken chords which recur throughout the piece and link the three sections, the music’s message and monumental architecture is driven home authoritatively, all handled with consummate skill and dramatic tension by Sunwook.

In contrast Piano Sonata No. 3 is a young man’s work, composed in 1853 when Brahms was just twenty. It was inspired by Beethoven and Schubert, and like the Prelude, Choral and Fugue, the five individual movements are linked with each other through subtle unifying themes. Sunwook displays sensitivity to the architecture of the music, building and emphasising structure through intelligently-paced climaxes, but just as in the Franck, there’s spontaneity too, particularly in the grander gestures. In contrast, the second movement is played with an unassuming and tender lyricism. The third movement begins with virtuoso panache, all dancing dotted rhythms, before the music moves into a hymn-like middle section. Again, the contrasting moods and textures are adeptly handled. The fourth movement opens like an intermezzo, intimate and expressive, but the serenity is quickly disturbed by an ominous low motif in the bass. The finale has everything in it – a jaunty main theme, sweeping lyrical melody, stately marches, a fugue, and moments of real pianistic bravura and high-octane energy. Sunwook’s crisp articulation and awareness of Brahms’ shifting moods, structures and soundscapes makes this a rewarding and absorbing performance. The recording has a bright yet warm clarity, the acoustic of the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin ideal for this music. The CD comes with comprehensive notes, including an introduction to the pieces by the pianist himself.

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Sunwook Kim, piano

César Franck
Prélude, Choral et Fugue
Johannes Brahms
Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, op. 5

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