![]() ![]() Paul Hindemith’s Ludus Tonalis – Studies in Counterpoint, Tonal Organisation & Piano Playing is certainly another tour de force, composed while the composer was living in the United States after escaping Nazi persecution. This sonata is the kind of feverishly expressionist and imaginative work that grows on you the more you discover about it, and is certainly a remarkable creation for a composer of 70 – you would probably place it as an intensely youthful tour de force if encountering it on a blind hearing. The second Adagio molto movement has a quietness of atmosphere and a melancholic beauty that builds to intense climaxes – a masterpiece of emotional landscaping that can take you anywhere your imagination fancies, though where you end up is unlikely to be all sunshine and rainbows. 1, and returning to Weisgall there is quite a hefty dose of the Romantic to be heard, especially in the first movement. With greater extremes in all directions, one can hear this as an extension of something like Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata Op. We are gifted greater clarity in this regard in the opening of the final Rondo quasi presto, but not for long. The ‘difficulty’ here is not so much grappling with angular fistfuls of notes, but Weisgall’s apparent freedom with rhythm. There is a logical sense of flow, and once you become acclimatised it becomes clear that each movement has an architecture that builds in ways not entirely dissimilar to classical examples. The result is one of intellectual rigour mixed with a keen sense of the dramatic. Weisgall’s idiom is ‘post-tonal’ though not dogmatically serial. There are some vocal works that have also been recorded, but while acknowledged as a significant composer Weisgall could hardly be considered mainstream.Īllan Kozinn’s booklet notes considers this Sonata for Piano an “undiscovered gem,” and it certainly is a work with a powerful effect. He is best known for his operas, fragments of one appearing on the Naxos label ( review). Hugo Weisgall is unlikely to be a familiar name to most readers. March 2016, Studzinski Recital Hall, Bowdoin College. Support us financially by purchasing this from ![]()
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