Piano Sonatas Nos. 3-4

Description

Anton Rubinstein occupied a central place in Russian musical life for nearly half a century and exerted a profound influence on generations of Russian musicians, including Tchaikovsky. His piano sonatas reveal a composer concerned with uniting intellect and passion within a symphonic conception of the keyboard. With its heroic and noble themes, the Third Piano Sonata was Rubinstein's favorite among them. The Piano Sonata No. 4, the last, represents the composer at the height of his creative mastery, infusing into a single work a lifetime of emotions and distilling the paradoxical tensions between intellect and impulse, Germanic structure and Russian ardor. Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2, performed by Han Chen, are available for listening on 8.573989.