Grace Francis - Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt: Consolation

This album contains the two most greatly significant solo piano sonatas of the mid-nineteenth century, coincidentally composed at the same time by two of the greatest composers of the era � who, in aesthetic development and individual character, could hardly have been more different from one another, although their mutual respect is one of the least appreciated aspects of their later relationship. Brahms�s Third Piano Sonata Opus 5 is a remarkably original work � already, in its five movements, seeking to burst the bounds of the customary four-movement structure, which the first two Sonatas had essayed. Indeed, the Third Sonata is Brahms�s largest work for solo piano and already exhibits a profound unification of the emergent Romantic movement within classical forms � an extraordinary achievement for the young composer. Liszt�s Sonata is arguably his masterpiece for the piano � a work of such newness of utterance, so original, such a creative achievement as this work represents must have crystallised those contemporaneous divergent schools of thought which was to lead to a virtual war of words between what one might call the traditionalists and those who epitomised the �new music�.