Haydn: Piano sonatas Vol 1
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JOSEF HAYDN
Haydn: Piano sonatas Vol 1
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (piano)
[ Chandos / CD ]
Release Date: Thursday 1 April 2010
This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's complete Debussy cycle has proven to be a real winner with the critics and the record buying public. He now embarks on the Haydn Piano Sonatas, and confirms that he should in no way be pigeon-holed in French repertoire.
Few leading pianists have recorded these virtuosic Classical sonatas but Maestro Bavouzet felt he had something new to contribute. He plays a Yamaha grand, imported from France which he felt best suited the timbre that he wanted to achieve.
The programme for Volume 1 contains the experimental and ambitious Sonata in A flat major, No.31; the elegantly virtuosic Sonata in D major, No.39l, expressive Sonata in B minor, No.47 and the almost Schubertian Sonatas in C sharp minor, No.49. Volume Two will be released this autumn.
Bavouzet launches this new series with the support of a number of concerts across Europe.
Marbecks Staff Picks 2010
"Clarity of line is paramount in this music and that is what Bavouzet delivers: he views the sonatas with sobriety but by no means dispassionately...Discreet ornamentation adds allure to music that offers both majesty and sweetness, and ranges from the grand gesture to Haydn's trademark high jinks"
Editor's Choice Gramophone Magazine May 2010
"however extensive his survey turns out to be, the results should be well worth hearing...Though he exploits all the tonal possibilities of the modern concert grand, Bavouzet also makes full use of the latest ideas on performance practice...It's the best kind of historically alert piano playing." (The Guardian)
"We badly need a great Haydn sonata cycle on a modern instrument, and on evidence here Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's promises to be just the ticket. It's fabulous, as wonderful in its own way as was his Debussy cycle for this same label. His approach couldn't be more intelligent: he takes almost all repeats, except in such places as the slow movement of Sonata No. 31 in A-flat (already 24 minutes long), where he adds a fine cadenza of his own making. In quick movements, where final chords seem to render a second-half repeat redundant, he leaves them out the first time through, a practice that I have long believed ought to be standard in such cases. It works wonderfully well."
(10/10 ClassicsToday April 2010)
"This first release in a long-term series offers four sonatas, dispatched with scintillating brightness and many ornamental trills...It's impossible not to be impressed...by the panache of No 39 in D or the grand carnival of the relatively lengthy No 31 in A-flat." The Times, 12th March 2010
"nothing, either in expression or tone, is ever forced. It helps that [Bavouzet's] modern grand (maker unspecified) has a relatively crisp lower register, and that the recorded sound rightly achieves spaciousness and intimacy...a wonderfully promising series." BBC Music Magazine, April 2010 ****
Tracks:
Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, Hob.XVI:46
Piano Sonata No. 39 in D major, Hob.XVI:24
Piano Sonata No. 47 in B minor, Hob.XVI:32
Piano Sonata No. 49 in C sharp minor, Hob.XVI:36
