BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No 8 SCHUBERT Piano Sonata No 21

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven

Genre:

Instrumental

Label: Semaphore Multimedia Ltd

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 75

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: SMLMP35

SMLMP35. BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No 8 SCHUBERT Piano Sonata No 21. Sarah Beth Briggs

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Sonata for Piano No. 8, 'Pathétique' Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer
Sarah Beth Briggs, Piano
Sonata for Piano No. 21 Franz Schubert, Composer
Franz Schubert, Composer
Sarah Beth Briggs, Piano
Fantasia Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer
Sarah Beth Briggs, Piano
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer
Sarah Beth Briggs’s Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert recital tells us of a double commitment. First, in depth and consideration she holds her own with many of the illustrious names on disc (and never more so than in the last pages of the Andante sostenuto of Schubert’s B flat Sonata). Second, her recital is a tribute to Denis Matthews, a great artist and inspired teacher who guided her through her early years. For her, his way with Schubert’s slow movement moved her to tears and she has clearly taken on the mantle of his musical stature.

Throughout, Briggs’s performances are as natural as they are concentrated. In Mozart’s C minor Fantasia (she has already recorded its companion Sonata) she lends a special freshness and vitality to every teeming drama. And again, in Beethoven there is none of that easy over-familiarity often associated with pianists of greater international fame. Here is all of ‘Beethoven’s C minor of life’ (EM Forster). Her Schubert is as personal (in the development of the first movement, given here with the repeat, she allows herself considerable freedom of pulse and romantic leeway) as it is disciplined. Her Scherzo is a rapid and lissom reply to the Andante’s profound elegy, admirably contrasted in the gnomic Trio. In the finale, she is memorably appreciative of its stop-go whimsicality, lyrical, ever-expanding lines and sudden explosions of drama, and ends with a thrillingly exultant close. Finely recorded, this is a notable tribute to three cornerstones of the classical Viennese repertoire.

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