Fugato

I listened to something pretty cool tonight: the recording of Kristín‘s concert in Salurinn in April.

• Edvard Grieg: Sonata in E minor Op. 7
• Alexander Scriabin: Sonata No. 2 in G sharp minor Op. 19
• Claude Debussy: L’isle joyeuse
• Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson: Der Wohltemperierte Pianist
• Samuel Barber: Sonata Op. 26

And as encores, Liszt’s Concert Étude “Un sospiro”, and a Capriccio by Páll Ísólfsson.

I have a special soft spot for the last movement of the Barber Sonata, a four-part fugue written at the request of Barber’s friend, one Vladimir Horowitz, who was the first to play this Sonata. It is, pianistically speaking, completely and utterly unreasonable.

If you have any interest in 20th-century (and 19th, for the Grieg) classical piano music, you’ll like this performance rather a lot. But you need not take my word for it: Jónas Sen liked it rather a lot too. Jónas is one of Iceland’s very few professional music critics; he is by far a tougher audience than I am, and his commentary is seldom as unreservedly positive as this. And no wonder. It’s a heck of a performance. Enjoy.

Never mind the brief fragment of a weather report at the beginning. That’s just a little something to keep you confused.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 13th, 2005 at 11:58 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.