Vladimir Stoupel
Rathaus & Shostakovich, Piano Sonatas
- Type CD
- Label CAvi
- UPC 4260085534814
- Catalog number AVI 8553481
- Release date 02 October 2020
About the album
Contemporaries with diverend biographies
“Although Karol Rathaus (1895-1954) and Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) were contemporaries, they could hardly have led more different lives. Both biographies nevertheless exemplify the 20th century with its catastrophes, persecutions and destruction, and it is thus worthwhile to feature their music together in the same program.
Born into a Polish Jewish family in Ternopil (then part of Austria-Hungary), Karol Rathaus started composing at a very early age. He was accepted into the Vienna Academy for the Performing Arts and Music in 1913, but his studies were suddenly interrupted by the onset of World War I: for the next four years, he would have to serve in the Austrian army. As one of Franz Schreker’s favorite students, he followed Schreker to the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, where he passed the entrance exam with flying colors with his First Sonata for Piano in C Minor, op. 2 (1920). The Vienna publishing house Universal-Edition published the sonata and signed a ten-year contract with the young composer. This marked the beginning of the quasi-meteoric rise of Karol Rathaus, whom prominent German critics were starting to hail as “New Music’s greatest hope” (Walter Schrenk).………
In December 1926, 20-year-old Dmitri Shostakovich presented his 1st Piano Sonata, op. 12, to the public in Leningrad. Certain parallels with Rathaus’s 3rd Sonata are striking: driving momentum, rapid changes of mood, a complex and technically challenging piano texture, free tonality, and a bustling metropolitan mood. In Shostakovich’s sonata we additionally encounter a series of clusters along with a grotesque aspect….” (Excerpt from the liner notes by Vladimir Stoupel)
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11Piano Sonata No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 2 I. Grave e maestoso
11:09 -
12Piano Sonata No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 2 II. Lento con espressione
09:35 -
13Piano Sonata No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 2 III. Scherzo. Presto
05:20 -
14Piano Sonata No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 2 IV. Finale. Grave – Allegro energico
05:54 -
15Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 20 I. Langsam
07:10 -
16Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 20 II. Scherzo. Presto
04:46 -
17Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 20 III. Fuge. Andante con Moto
07:24 -
18Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 20 IV. Presto
05:03 -
21Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 12 Allegro
13:25 -
22Piano Sonata in B Minor No. 2, Op. 61 I. Allegretto
07:05 -
23Piano Sonata in B Minor No. 2, Op. 61 II. Largo
09:37 -
24Piano Sonata in B Minor No. 2, Op. 61 III. Moderato
17:37