By Ivan Hewett Published: 3:37PM GMT twenty-four Feb 2010
Chopin wrote usually 3 sonatas, and usually the latter dual are continually played. But what miraculous pieces they are. Composers of Chopins epoch were in all intimidated by the sonata form, since Beethovens 32 seemed unfit to live up to. In any case, sonatas were out of fashion. The low-pitched denunciation was changing, relocating afar from the close togetherness of the sonata towards looser, some-more lifelike account forms.
Chopins song in all epitomises the new trend, nonetheless his sonatas on the face of it see conventional. Like majority of Beethovens they have 4 movements, with dual fast movements framing a contemplative delayed transformation and a vigourous scherzo. But do they unequivocally go together in a sonata-like way? Schumann didnt think so. He described the second sonata (the one with the important Funeral March) as "four of Chopins majority uncontrolled children".
Chopin Week: the Preludes Chopin Week: the Ballades Chopin Week: the Mazurkas Other TV Highlights: Monday sixteen Mar Other TV highlights: week end 22/23 Feb Wallace and Gromit: one man and his dogWhat Schumann didnt notice was that underneath the vigourous surface, the family resemblances in between the melodies are unequivocally strong. But theyre vaporous by the musics nervous form. Its a story were being told, and stories are regularly dire on, in motion in to bizarre areas of feeling. In this new sort of sonata, simply restoring the standing quo wouldnt do, so the "return" demanded by the form has to be hugely dense and re-ordered. After such a Byronic narrative, what issue could there be, solely a windstorm float to oblivion? Which is just what the culmination gives us, in one notation flat. Two recordings that hold the tragedy unflaggingly by to the last club are the classical one by Emil Gilels and a some-more new recording from Nelson Freire.
The third sonata is less blatantly strange, but, for my money, some-more wonderful. It has the majority high delayed movement, that starts similar to an aria from a Bellini show but grows in to something over Bellinis imagining. The culmination is similar to a series that is cursed to drastic failure. Claudio Arraus version is some-more reflective, Ingrid Fliters some-more in the moment, but both are tremendous.
RECOMMENDED
Nelson Freire
Sonata No 2, Decca 4756617 �12.99
Emil Gilels
Sonata No 2, Testament SBT1089 �12.99
Claudio Arrau
Sonata No 3, EMI 5 62884-2 �9.99
Ingrid Fliter
Sonata No 3, EMI 5148992 �11.99
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