Bartok - Piano Concerto No. 3
Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 29
Brahms - Piano Quartet No. 2
Chopin - Three Nocturnes, Op. 15
Debussy - Pour le piano
Faure
- Violin Sonata No. 1
- Piano Quartet No. 1
- Ballade for piano
Holmboe - Sinfonia in Memoriam
Rachmaninov - Symphony No. 2
Schumann - 'Album leaf' No. 1
Sibelius - Karelia Suite
Vivaldi - Gloria, RV 589
Vivaldi - Nisi Dominus in A, RV 803
The Bach violin concertos are rather lovely. I don't know whether I was somehow 'pre-tuned' to them by having listened to the harpischord versions a couple of months earlier (part of the same set of CDs), but I really did enjoy them quite a bit. At some point I will have to go back and do a direct comparison between the versions of each work, to get a better idea of what Bach did to turn a violin piece into a harpischord one, because the 2 instruments are fundamentally different. A violin can sustain its tone for as long as you want, and a harpischord most definitely cannot.
The Haydn piano trios were the last 'set' that he wrote, one of at least 4 sets from around the time of his second visit to London. They are sparkling, vibrant stuff, but then so is just about every bit of Haydn I've laid my hands on so far. I'm sure I'll add some more to the ever-expanding shopping list. 14-odd discs worth just isn't enough, apparently...
Somewhere I read that these three Faure pieces were his 'early' masterpieces, so I decided to listen to them as a group. The term 'early' is an interesting one: these pieces date from when Faure was in his early 30s! It's all a question of perspective, really. For Mozart, that age is seen as when he was in the advanced stages of his career. But Faure had nearly half a century of composing left in him.
Anyway, of the three it was the violin sonata that really satisfied me. I hadn't listened to it for a couple of years, and this time I dove into it, playing it again and again until I felt like I knew it intimately and could follow the whole thing the way I might follow a favourite pop album. Writing this several weeks later, it's the slower 2nd movement that appears in my head, and instantly transports me to the same feelings of pleasure I was having in January.
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