Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy - Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Op. 31/3 & 110, Bagatelles, Op. 33 & 126 (2025) [Digital Download 24/96]

A unique recital on record of complementary bagatelles and sonatas from two distinct periods in Beethoven's life, in a new recording by a modern master pianist.Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy is 'a storyteller', remarked Jeremy Nicholas in his Gramophone review of the Chopin sonatas on Piano Classics. He went on to praise 'nigh-on ideal' playing in the Second Sonata: 'unforced, rhythmically buoyant [and] texturally translucent'. The German pianist now illuminates four works of Beethoven with the same qualities.

The Sonata Op.31 No.3 and Bagatelles Op.33 both date from what would prove to be a transitional point in Beethoven's career, around the year 1802, as he was stretching his wings and his capabilities. They achieve striking and often sudden contrasts of expression within both expansive sonata-form structures and the miniature sketch-form of the bagatelle, which Beethoven effectively invented from scratch with this set. 'Schmitt-Leonardy's superb technical and musical command holds unflagging interest' through the variation sets of Brahms, according to Jed Distler in another Gramophone review. Such command is a prerequisite for addressing the late masterpieces of Beethoven, so often recorded, and to which Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy brings his own, individual musical intelligence. Twenty years elapsed between those earlier pieces and the Sonata Op.110, during which time Beethoven's thinking inevitably underwent a sea-change. By this point he was striving ever more keenly to achieve the expression of transcendence in music, and the Sonata's ineffable opening phrase seems to distil that search into an unforgettable gesture. The Sonata is also marked by the composer's intensifying preoccupation with Baroque-era counterpoint, which gives the most haunting life to the finale's semi-autobiographical narrative of vitality lost and regained. The Bagatelles Op.126 are trifles in name only, contemporary with the Ninth Symphony, sharing the Olympian humour of it's Scherzo and the span of the Diabelli Variations. Each one captures a mood as intense as it is fleeting. They are perhaps comparable in this way with the sonatas of Scarlatti, such as those played by Schmitt-Leonardy on another Piano Classics album: 'one the most intelligently programmed and distinctively played Scarlatti collections to cross my reviewer's desk in years.' (Gramophone)

Tracklist:
01. Piano Sonata in E-Flat Major, Op. 31 No. 3: I. Allegro
02. Piano Sonata in E-Flat Major, Op. 31 No. 3: II. Scherzo. Allegretto Vivace
03. Piano Sonata in E-Flat Major, Op. 31 No. 3: III. Minuet. Moderato E Grazioso - Trio
04. Piano Sonata in E-Flat Major, Op. 31 No. 3: IV. Presto Con Fuoco
05. 7 Bagatelles, Op. 33: I. Andante Grazioso Quasi Allegretto
06. 7 Bagatelles, Op. 33: II. Scherzo - Allegro
07. 7 Bagatelles, Op. 33: III. Allegretto
08. 7 Bagatelles, Op. 33: IV. Andante
09. 7 Bagatelles, Op. 33: V. Allegro Ma Non Troppo
10. 7 Bagatelles, Op. 33: Vi. Allegretto Quasi Andante
11. 7 Bagatelles, Op. 33: VII. Presto
12. Piano Sonata in A-Flat Major, Op. 110: I. Moderato Cantabile Molto Espressivo
13. Piano Sonata in A-Flat Major, Op. 110: II. Allegro Molto
14. Piano Sonata in A-Flat Major, Op. 110: III. Adagio Ma Non Troppo
15. 6 Bagatelles, Op. 126: I. Andante Con Moto, Cantabile E Con Piacevole
16. 6 Bagatelles, Op. 126: II. Allegro
17. 6 Bagatelles, Op. 126: III. Andante, Cantabile Ed Espressivo
18. 6 Bagatelles, Op. 126: IV. Presto
19. 6 Bagatelles, Op. 126: V. Quasi Allegretto
20. 6 Bagatelles, Op. 126: Vi. Presto — Andante Amabile E Con Moto


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