Following his recordings dedicated to Beethoven’s piano concertos (BIS-2281) and Franz Liszt’s Transcendental Études (BIS-2681), the gold medal winner at the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009, Haochen Zhang, now brings these two composers together on this new recording with two summits of 19th-century piano literature: Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata and Liszt’s Sonata in B minor.
The Piano Sonata No. 29, the ‘Hammerklavier’, is the longest, richest and perhaps the most masterful of Beethoven’s 32 sonatas. In it, he pushes the instrument and the performer to their limits, and even beyond. Its immense complexity, the utter diversity of its movements and its daring structural conception give the sonata an unrivalled place in Beethoven’s œuvre. It was very rarely played during Beethoven’s lifetime, and Franz Liszt contributed to its discovery with a concert performance in Paris that has since gone down in history.
No stranger to the description ‘unperformable’, Liszt also wanted to write the piano sonata that would reconcile his own approach to pianism with Beethoven’s legacy. His Sonata in B minor, a monumental work that transforms the piano into a virtual orchestra, is a landmark work that sums up Liszt’s genius.
