Search - Karg-Elert :: Piano Sonatas 1 & 3

RARE ART NOUVEAU...

Sébastien Melmoth | Hôtel d'Alsace, PARIS | 05/06/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

".

Rare Piano Sonatas by the ultra-Art Nouveau composer Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933).



[This 1996 disc was out of print; appears to have been reissued in 2006--on the wonderful cpo label, of course!]



Karg-Elert is in the line of Beethoven-Brahms-Schoenberg, but he is cosmopolitian enough to have synthesized Debussy and Scriabin--all into an unique musical vocabulary which emphasizes chordal colourations.



Two Piano Sonatas: No. 1, f#-minor (1907); No. 3, c#-minor (1908). Characteristics: rhythmic, tricky tempi (5/8; 7/8; 11/8; 15/16); chordal shifts w/harmonies in third-interval relation or seventh chords w/root tones tritone seperation; preference for ninth & eleventh chords; augmented octave w/major seventh & major ninth.



"Fantastic and lively"; "Passionate and stormy"; "baroque-bizarre and bold"; "Erotic and warm."



"Endless fantasy"; "through-composed, self-unfolding music"; "organic structuring"; "an orchestral work for piano, ventures out to the pianistic limits."



Karg-Elert's music features "the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel, the naturalism of [late-] Richard Strauss, and the philosophic freight of Scriabin."



"The music itself IS the thought process,"--in the manner of Hegel's dialectical model.



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Get the whole harmonium set: Works for Harmonium 1 Sigfrid Karg-Elert: Harmonium Works, Vol. 2 Sigfrid Karg-Elert: Works for Harmonium, Vol. 3 Sigfrid Karg-Elert: Works for Harmonium, Vol. 4 Karg-Elert: Harmonium Works Vol 5 Sigfried Karg-Elert: Compositions for Harmonium



The whole piano set: Sigfrid Karg-Elert: Piano Works, Vol. 1 Piano Works 2 Karg-Elert: Piano Works Vol. 3 Sigfrid Karg-Elert: Piano Works, Vol. 4 ."