STERNDALE BENNETT Sonata Op.13
SCHUMANN Symphonic Etudes Op.13
HIROAKI TAKENOUCHI, Piano
Artalinna A018 / ****1/2
William
Sterndale Bennett (1816-1875) was one of the notable musical figures of the
Victorian musical establishment, whose star has now faded into near oblivion,
completely eclipsed by his contemporary continental colleagues. He was a close
friend of the early Romantic German composers Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann,
with whom he shared a similar middle-class outlook to life and musical
aesthetics.
Sterndale
Bennett's sprawling Piano Sonata in F minor in four movements was
composed in 1837 as a wedding gift for Mendelssohn. His style is unabashedly
conservative, much in the genteel drawing-room manner of Mendelssohn's Songs
Without Words, but its ambition is closer to Mendelssohn's own sonatas and
Chopin's very early Sonata No.1, which are hardly played these days.
Nevertheless, there is much to enjoy in its assiduous craft and pretty
filigree.
Its
coupling, Schumann's far more popular Symphonic Etudes, dates from 1834
and was dedicated to Sterndale Bennett. London-based Japanese pianist Hiroaki
Takenouchi plays the earlier edition, which does not include the five
posthumous variations, but has a slightly longer and fussier final variation
that might raise eyebrows. The obvious dedication and virtuosity displayed in
his hands make both works well worth hearing.
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