SKU: HL.14018850

ISBN 9780711986008. 9.0x12.0x0.295 inches.

The Prelude, Hymn And Toccata 1987 is dedicated to, and was commissioned by the Nettle-Markham Piano Duo. It was the second work to have been written for them by the composer, the first being the Sonata For Piano Duet Op.92. This twenty minute work begins with Leighton's typical preludial double-dotted rhythms and contrapuntal textures; it develops into dark, passionate music and erupts into single and double cadenzas. The gentle Hymn is ushered in quietly and unfolds in long, rhapsodic sections, building up to more climactic cadenzas before dissolving gradually to an ethereal conclusion. The Toccata finale shows Leighton's masterly piano writing and contrasts biting, rhythmic motifs with sweeping, yearning elegiac phrases.

SKU: BR.EB-8993

ISBN 9790004187227. 9 x 12 inches.

The three piano sonatas by Joachim Raff (1822-1882), representing his three main creative phases, occupy a special position among his more than 100 piano pieces. They reflect a significant compositional aspiration whereas Raff otherwise frequently leans towards the salon-music genre in his piano music. Raff composed the early sonata op. 14 in 1844 after his first works were positively evaluated and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy had encouraged him to venture a career as a composer. The Fantasie-Sonate [Fantasy Sonata] in d minor op. 168, Raff wrote in 1871 at the height of his fame as one of Germany's then most-played composers. Its dedication to Camille Saint-Saens shows his opposition to the rampant German disapproval of France and its music representatives in the wake of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/71. The second version of the sonata op. 14, composed in the fall of 1881, had only the opus number in common with the earlier version. In this late work Raff had created an entirely new sonata. ,,Beautifully presented on cream paper, with exceptional clarity and generous spacing. The Fantasie-Sonate in D minor Op. 168, in particular, is a masterpiece which manifests both considerable power and exquisite craftsmanship. (www.pianodao.com).

SKU: HL.14030704

The second sonata is on a much larger scale than the first, and has three movements which develop in intensity, reaching a climax in the last movement which is a passacaglia. It is a stormy work, in the sense that it opens peacefully and closes in a similar manner, with a heavy shower of notes and ideas in between. There is little hint of this in the gentle opening of the first movement, and although it follows the pattern of its previous sonata in developing a climax and releasing it again, it is not until the scherzo, with its powerful motor rhythms, that the full fury of the storm breaks. The concluding passacaglia is built on repetition. The nature of the form party makes this inevitable, but repetition becomes a subtext, with the idea of speeding up to a climax being itself repeated, the second time subsiding into the peace of a storm blown out. ~ John Joubert.