Piano Sonatas Nos, 30, 31, 32, : Lubimov(Fp)

Beethoven: Last Piano Sonatas

Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109
Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, Op. 110
Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111

Alexei Lubimov, fortepiano - Alois Graff 1828

They must be played ‘uncomfortably’, ‘intangibly’; nothing in them reveals itself, nothing ‘plays itself’, and one must take enormous pains to ‘elucidate’ the text for oneself... these sonatas are divorced from the keyboard instrument itself... as if the musical content of these sonatas ‘disregards’ the instrument to hand, overcoming its material nature and its historical characteristics... I felt still more strongly how astonishing, how unusual the compositional material is and how tenaciously Beethoven seeks to consolidate, extend, and transform for his own idiosyncratic purposes the forms and structural principles he inherited from his predecessors.” Alexei Lubimov

ALEXEI LUBIMOV belongs both to the great Russian tradition of pianists such as Richter and Gilels (he was the one of the last pupils of Heinrich Neuhaus in Moscow) and to the generation of Early Music pioneers that includes Gustav Leonhardt and the Kuijken brothers. He is also a leading interpreter of such modern composers as Denisov, Schnittke, Silvestrov, and Arvo Part. ( Zigzag-Territoires )