Sally Pinkas - Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B Minor; Frank Bridge: Piano Sonata (2021)

Tracklist

01. Piano Sonata No. 2 in B Minor, Op. 61: I. Allegretto
02. Piano Sonata No. 2 in B Minor, Op. 61: II. Largo
03. Piano Sonata No. 2 in B Minor, Op. 61 : III. Moderato (con moto)
04. Piano Sonata, H. 160: I. Lento ma non troppo – Andante ben moderato – Allegro energico
05. Piano Sonata, H. 160: II. Andante ben moderato
06. Piano Sonata, H. 160: III. Lento – Allegro non troppo

The piano sonatas of Dmitri Shostakovich and Frank Bridge were created while the world was in turmoil.

After his evacuation from besieged Leningrad, Shostakovich seemed to be holding on to sanity through frenzied composing. He wrote his Piano Sonata quickly between the 7th and the 8th Symphonies, and premiered it himself in Moscow soon thereafter. In the late 1930s his avantgarde music had met with Stalinist disapproval, but by 1943 the Sonata’s Neo-classical clarity was beyond reproach. 20 years earlier Bridge was grappling with a changing world and growing dis-satisfied with his pleasing late-Romantic style. In the aftermath of the First World War he spent three years completing only one work, his Piano Sonata. It was premiered in London in 1925 by Dame Myra Hess. Passionate and complex, Bridge’s new music estranged him from both the onceadoring public and the musical establishment. There was no direct connection between Shostakovich and Bridge. In the 1960s Shostakovich met composer Benjamin Britten and the two remained life-long friends. Through this friendship Shostakovich may have come to know of Bridge, who was Britten’s composition teacher and mentor. In spite of their different circumstances, the two Sonatas comprising this album share their creators’ masterful handling of form and texture, and use of the iconographic Waltz and March. While both Shostakovich and Bridge composed other pieces which dealt more explicitly with loss, their Piano Sonatas, inscribed to the memory of friends lost to war, offer somber reflections on troubling times.

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