Search - Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatte, Marc-Andre Hamelin :: Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté: Piano Sonatas

The two last Sonatas alone make this set worth the buy

Discophage | France | 01/27/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Good to see that Altarus is still in business and that this set is still available. See my detailed review of the first publication, Sophie-Carmen Echhardt-Gramatté: Piano Sonatas. You will find thereunder the basic biographical information about the composer. The pianism is always of confounding virtuosity, but the four early Sonatas (composed between 1923 and 1931) are musically pretty derivative and hollow, I find: something between uninspired Rachmaninoff, Bach-Busoni or the kind of Romantic virtuoso Salon music so much in favor in the early 20th Century, and Albeniz without the unique poetry (the composer lived two years in Spain and the influence can be heard in the 2nd and 3rd Sonatas).



The two last ones came after a gap of 20 years (1951) and, while the pianistic virtuosity remains awesome, they are on another musical planet. Eckhardt-Gramatté had by then been living for 12 years in Vienna, and the Austro-German model of Schoenberg-Hindemith-Krenek now predominates. The 5th verges on atonal, it is angular, angry, with strikingly imaginative pianistic moments. The 6th is not only a pianistic but also a compositional tour de force, with a dazzling toccata-like first movement for left-hand alone, a whimsical and mercurial second movement for the rarely-used right-hand alone, and a finale combining the two previous movements (thanks to only slight alterations) !



The set is worth the buy for these two works alone. Needless to say, Hamelin's readings are definitive - I am aware of no recording since, although the two last Sonatas certainly deserve more currency (the composer recorded her own Fifth Sonata on LP, years ago, long gone)."