Search - White, Roger Smalley :: Piano Sonatas 15,29,31,54,56,75,76,78,86,87,95, Etc

Always evocative, engaging piano's vast uncharted history

04/03/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"John White (lives in London) has been writing piano music his entire life. The genre of the sonata is like a diary to him, more Scarlatti than Listz in conception. He has over 125 Sonatas,( I lost count) and range in length from 1 to 50 minutes. His hidden creative agenda is the piano's neglect, that its substance has been marginalized by the great works of Chopin and Listz in a detrimental way, Instead his lineage begins with Busoni,Sorabji,Alkan,Medtner,even Reger, and conceptually the late Cornelius Cardew These are starting points for White. So each Sonata always indulges,provokes and comments against a genre and engages a special sound,(octaves, thirds never heard before) a texture, or accompaniment, someplace gleaned from the piano's vast history Like a sonic piano archaeologist White digs and brushes off the dust of the 19th Century to bring us new bright contents, new relationships in piano sound. Smalley is a senstitive committed interpreter, always engaging in an equally bright livily energetic sound. I would have loved to hear Richter play these sonatas or perhaps Kissen someday."