Weber: Piano Sonata No. 2 in A flat major, Op. 39

Weber, best known for his operas today, was also a very fine pianist and he wrote a sizeable body of piano music of which the four sonatas are the centrepiece. These are perhaps the first truly ‘Romantic’ piano sonatas and were a great influence on the succeeding generation of German composers such as Mendelssohn and Schumann; all are large scale and virtuosic and their quality makes it surprising how rarely they have been recorded. The set also includes the most important of Weber’s other piano works including the once hugely popular ‘Invitation to the Dance’, a work which has become better known in the orchestration of Berlioz.

‘These are distinguished performances, by a pianist of true romantic temper, of four works that have had more than their share of misunderstanding from performers and critics alike’ (Gramophone)

Garrick Ohlsson is the pianist, acclaimed for his performances of Brahms and Chopin on Hyperion. These delightful recordings were originally released on Arabesque.

Emil Gilels (1916-1985) was one of the greatest interpreters of Beethoven during the second half of the twentieth century. One critic noted at the March 1968 concert: 'In a superb piano recital at the Festival Hall yesterday afternoon Emil Gilels achieved a perfect compromise between the classical and romantic in Beethoven, doing so with tone as limpid and beautiful as can ever been heard on this platform.'

Gilels’ performance of Beethoven's 'Waldstein' Sonata from this 1968 concert received the following review: 'The Waldstein Sonata in C, Op.90 was a performance in a thousand, a poised integrated whole yet full of the most exquisitely fashioned, revealing detail.' The rarely heard Twelve Variations in A major was a Russian dance from the ballet Das Waldmächen by Czech composer Paul Wranitzky (1756-1808). It would appear that the first time Gilels played this work was at a recording session in Russia in 1952.

Beethoven's 32 Variations in C minor together with the 12 Variations, were included on Gilel's sixth tour of the United States in October and November 1966. The 32 Variations in C minor was also a work that Giles played from the beginning of his career, first performing it in Tbilisi in November 1936. Gilels, in his element here, caused one reviewer to say that Gilels had brought 'striking new musical light to throw on the over-familiar C minor variations'. The rare Weber Piano Sonata No.2 concluded the 1968 recital which Gilels, by playing it slightly slower, notably in the first movement, brings a great deal of detail to his performance.

Alfred Cortot was one of the very greatest pianists of the 20th Century, renowned above all for his intuitive, highly personal interpretations of Romantic masterpieces.

Drawn from sessions in London between 1931 and 1948, these recordings include a wonderfully poetic reading of Weber’s introspective and playful Second Piano Sonata, and intense yet subtly nuanced renditions of Liszt’s groundbreaking B minor Sonata, issued almost entirely from first takes, and Légende No. 2.

Cortot’s own arrangements imbue Schubert’s Litanei and Brahms’s famous Lullaby with a heartfelt touch.

A critic wrote after Cortot’s 5th January 1927 recital at New York’s Aeolian Hall: “He is one of those great musicians from whose readings of familiar works there is almost invariably something to learn and remember… it would be hard to surpass his sincerity, his feeling, his colouring, and declamation of the music. Nor are many as fortunate as he in striking the mean between what is nobly expressive and what is sentimental….”