Josquin Otal - Liszt - Reubke (2019)

The epic 30 minute-long Piano Sonata in B minor composed by Franz Liszt in the early 1850s is still famous for its architecture which combines four regular movements in the genre into one movement structured by themes-characters and a very large-scale tonal organisation! Few of the composer's contemporaries understood the revolutionary style of this piece. Except, perhaps, for Julius Reubke, a young German piano prodigy, admirer and student of Liszt who played this Sonata beneath his master's watchful gaze. Reubke also composed a piece of vast proportions in 1857 in the same style as Liszt. This unique chance to hear these two pieces in contrast is brought to us by Josquin Otal (27 years old), one of the most promising French pianists of his generation.