Beethoven: Sonata in E-flat, Op. 27, No. 1
Boulanger: Vers la vie nouvelle
Akio Yashiro: Sonate pour piano
Beethoven: Sonata in C#m, Op. 27, No. 2 (Moonlight)
Hisako Kawamura, piano
Beethoven’s Op. 27 sonatas are a wonderful pair of left-field masterpieces, full of unexpected twists and unusual ideas – not for nothing did Beethoven label them ‘quasi una fantasia’ (like a fantasia). One became the most famous of all his sonatas (though he never called it ‘moonlight’) and in both you can readily picture him at the piano improvising and experimenting as we know he did. Between these very special Beethoven pieces, Kawamura offers a fascinating teacher-pupil pairing in Yashiro and Boulanger. She was arguably the most influential music teacher of the 20th century (her students included musicians as different as Gershwin and Glass), while he was a star student from Tokyo who found his musical voice in Paris.
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