International Piano
Chopin: Sonatas - Pietro De Maria
Once again his playing stuns and impresses – a rare amalgam of mastery, poetic daring and integrityVolume 3 of Pietro De Maria’s projected complete Chopin cycle (the two previous discs were reviewed in IP March/April 2008) consists of the Three Sonatas. Once again his playing stuns and impresses – a rare amalgam of mastery, poetic daring and integrity. Even in the rarely played First Sonata, where Chopin doffs his hat to academe and offers a dour response to his teacher’s conservative needs, his playing is touched with a rare grace and musicianship. Fearless in the first movement’s treacherous cascades of Hummel-inspired double notes, he is no less full of poetic wonder at the Larghetto’s novel 5/4 progression.
For the more familiar Second and Third Sonatas he summons all of his formidabile pianistic resource, recreating the B flat minor Sonata’s awe-inspiring grandeur and originality with rare conviction. He shuns the first-movement repeat (it makes little sense harmonically and surely impedes the headlong rush of one of Chopin’s most tautly constructed arguments) and offers a dazzling sense of rancour and ferocity in the second movement (surely Chopin’s ‘Mephisto’ Scherzo). His tempo for the Funeral March’s trio may be exceptionally slow but it is maintained with unfaltering poise while he captures all of the eerie finale’s whirling enigma.
His performance of the Third Sonata is no less revelatory, challenging convention and expectiation at every point yet remaining scrupulously true to the score. Nothing is taken for granted and everything is recreated in his first glory. Above all this performance makes you doubly aware of Chopin’s genius, of an engulfing force and turbulence that awed and unsettled Chopin’s first listeners.
From De Maria Chopin is forever new. Once more he has been finely recorded and the next volume in this invaluable series is eagerly awaited.
Once again his playing stuns and impresses – a rare amalgam of mastery, poetic daring and integrityVolume 3 of Pietro De Maria’s projected complete Chopin cycle (the two previous discs were reviewed in IP March/April 2008) consists of the Three Sonatas. Once again his playing stuns and impresses – a rare amalgam of mastery, poetic daring and integrity. Even in the rarely played First Sonata, where Chopin doffs his hat to academe and offers a dour response to his teacher’s conservative needs, his playing is touched with a rare grace and musicianship. Fearless in the first movement’s treacherous cascades of Hummel-inspired double notes, he is no less full of poetic wonder at the Larghetto’s novel 5/4 progression.
For the more familiar Second and Third Sonatas he summons all of his formidabile pianistic resource, recreating the B flat minor Sonata’s awe-inspiring grandeur and originality with rare conviction. He shuns the first-movement repeat (it makes little sense harmonically and surely impedes the headlong rush of one of Chopin’s most tautly constructed arguments) and offers a dazzling sense of rancour and ferocity in the second movement (surely Chopin’s ‘Mephisto’ Scherzo). His tempo for the Funeral March’s trio may be exceptionally slow but it is maintained with unfaltering poise while he captures all of the eerie finale’s whirling enigma.
His performance of the Third Sonata is no less revelatory, challenging convention and expectiation at every point yet remaining scrupulously true to the score. Nothing is taken for granted and everything is recreated in his first glory. Above all this performance makes you doubly aware of Chopin’s genius, of an engulfing force and turbulence that awed and unsettled Chopin’s first listeners.
From De Maria Chopin is forever new. Once more he has been finely recorded and the next volume in this invaluable series is eagerly awaited.
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