(++++) FORMS OF RETHINKING

Vivaldi: The Four Seasons; Concerto for Cello and Strings, RV 403; Sonata in D minor, Op. 1, No. 12 (“La Follia”). La Petite Bande conducted by Sigiswald Kuijken. Accent. $11.99. 

Franz Xaver Mozart: Piano Quartet, Op. 1; Violin Sonatas, Opp. 7 and 15. Hansjacob Staemmler, pianoforte; Muriel Cantoreggi, violin; Johannes Erkes, viola; Juris Teichmanis, cello. CPO. $18.99. 

     There is room for new approaches even in music as hyper-familiar as the first four concertos in Vivaldi’s Op. 8, Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione – that is, The Four Seasons. A re-release on Accent of the exceptional performances of these works by Sigiswald Kuijken and the six members (including Kuijken himself) of La Petite Bande shows anew just how innovative an interpretation can be – while not only being true to historical performance practices but also being more cognizant of them than are other historically informed recordings. The La Petite Bande versions of The Four Seasons not only employ appropriate tuning and technique but also alter the sound world of the concertos in two significant ways: by assigning only one instrument to each part, so the concertos sound as chamber music rather than solo-against-ensemble pieces; and by using a violoncello da spalla instead of a Baroque or, worse, modern cello. Although the exact uses of the violoncello da spalla – which is held against the shoulder like a viola, not between the legs like a more-modern cello – are not entirely clear, it was certainly in use in Baroque times and undoubtedly had specific purposes within certain kinds of music, such as pieces designed to be played by musicians as they marched into and out of a performance space. Coupled with the one-instrument-to-a-part approach of this recording, the use of the violoncello da spalla gives Vivaldi’s concertos an intimacy and clarity beyond what they normally display, and makes them into true chamber music: it is easy to imagine them being performed, with Vivaldi himself as solo violinist, in an intimate setting. The recording is also very clever in using different soloists for each concerto: La Petite Bande includes four violins, and each gets to be front-and-center (while clearly emerging from within the entirety and not in any way being competitive with the larger group) in a different concerto – Sigiswald Kuijken in Winter, Sara Kuijken in Spring, Luis Otavio Santos in Summer, and Dmitry Badiarov in Autumn. In addition, Badiarov plays the violoncello da spalla in Winter, and this is itself an interesting sidelight on historical practice, since the point of the “shoulder cello” was that violinists could easily switch to it when necessary – something they could not do with the between-the-legs cello, whose playing form and style differ significantly from those of the violin. This recording cleverly introduces the entire concept of the violoncello da spalla before the start of The Four Seasons  by opening with Vivaldi’s Concerto for Cello and Strings, RV 403, in which Sigiswald Kuijken is the cellist – so even before Winter, the violin-and-cello-playing combination is clear. And the recording concludes with Sigiswald Kuijken as violin soloist in the D minor “La Follia” concerto, which both complements and contrasts well with The Four Seasons. Of course, none of the explorations of historical instrumentation and performance practice, both unfamiliar and familiar (the latter including tuning to 415 Hz for the A above middle C), would be meaningful if these interpretations, which date to 2006, were not convincing on their own. But they most certainly are, and it is a measure of their quality that they are clear, clean, and in some ways revelatory entirely without regard to the details of which instruments and instrumental complements they include. The result of the thoughtfulness and skill underlying this recording is a CD that is exemplary throughout. 

     The reconsideration is of the composer himself rather than any specific piece of music on a new CPO disc featuring works by Franz Xaver Mozart (1791-1844), the sixth of Wolfgang’s children and one of only two to survive infancy. Interestingly, there is a touch of period tuning practice here as well, with the piano tuned to 430 Hz – below the current 440 Hz standard but above the Baroque 415 Hz (which, however, was by no means standardized; indeed, the whole question of concert pitch is fraught with longstanding complexity). It is fitting existentially that this very fine recording is pitched in a transition zone, because that is where F.X. Mozart himself ended up: protecting and trying to extend his father’s legacy while metaphorically dipping his compositional toes into early Romanticism. This is quite noticeable in the first work on this CD, the Piano Quartet, Op. 1, which is in G minor – the key so famously used by Wolfgang in his Symphony No. 40 (and before that in No. 25). F.X. Mozart’s quartet, written when the composer was no more than 13 years old, is certainly not as stormy or intense as his father’s late symphony, but it is emotionally engaging, with the first and longest movement, in particular, mixing intensity and lyricism in a thoroughly winning way that places this music on the cusp of a new era – it is worth remembering that 1804 was the year in which Beethoven finished his “Eroica” symphony. The performers on this disc, although not formally organized as a named quartet, play together with sure-handed skill and great sensitivity to each other as well as to the music. The Adagio, ma non troppo central movement of the quartet, which begins in a pastoral mood but soon delves considerably deeper, is especially effective, and the theme-and-variations finale is thoroughly charming. That F.X. Mozart deserves to be rethought as more than just Wolfgang’s son is clear from this very early work, and becomes more apparent from the composer’s two violin sonatas. F.X. Mozart was far from prolific – indeed, the three pieces on this disc represent all his chamber music with piano except for his Cello Sonata, Op. 19, and a brief E minor rondo for flute and piano. So Opp. 7 and 15 are the only extant demonstrations of his abilities in the violin-and-piano form. The three-movement Op. 7, in B-flat, finds F.X. Mozart looking back toward his father’s time in its poise and balance. At the same time, it is a work that decidedly favors the piano, the younger Mozart’s own preferred instrument and the one for which he wrote most often (including two concertos and a number of solo salon-like pieces with distinctly Romantic touches). The slow movement bears the same tempo designation as does that of Op. 1, but here there is more gentle flow to the music and much less of an attempt at emotional connection: the movement is a well-made pleasantry, which indeed is a good description of the sonata as a whole. Op. 15, in F, is actually a shorter work, but it is in four movements and more closely balances the piano and violin parts. The music flows well, and the exchanges between the instruments are handled adeptly. The slow movement is neither very slow (Andante) nor very long (under two minutes), and the sonata as a whole makes no claim to profundity. It does, however, offer considerable charm throughout, with a pleasantly bouncy third-movement Polonaise and a lively concluding Rondo that gives the violinist more opportunities for display than elsewhere in the work. Hansjacob Staemmler and Muriel Cantoreggi play the violin-and-piano sonatas with sensitivity and fine style, and without trying to make them seem to be any more than well-made but rather superficial pieces. Modest and self-effacing, F.X. Mozart wrote only about 40 works (only 30 have opus numbers), and nothing on this CD argues that he was more than a minor composer, his provenance notwithstanding. However, the whole disc does suggest that he and his music are worth something of a reconsideration, without reference to Wolfgang’s overarching shadow, for the enjoyment they provide on their own terms.

(+++) SHORT AND SOMEWHAT SWEET

Music for Trumpet by Virginia Composers John D’earth, Carl Roskott, David Sampson, Dwight Bigler, Kelly Rossum, and Kent Holliday. Jason Crafton, trumpet. Blue Griffin Recordings. $15.99. 

Music for Flute and Piano by Joshua Rosenblum, David Chase, Mary-Mitchell Campbell, Gary Adler, Georgia Stitt, and Joseph Church. Janet Axelrod, flute. Freedom Road Records. $10. 

Music for Winds by Reena Esmail, Tyson Gholston Davis, and David Sanford. Zéphyros Winds (Jennifer Grim, flute and piccolo; Fatma Dogler, oboe and English horn; Marianne Gythfeldt, clarinet and bass clarinet; Zohar Schondorf, horn; Saxton Rose, bassoon). UNCSA Media. $9.99. 

     One of the longstanding benefits of CDs over vinyl records has been the ability of the newer format to fit so much more music onto so much smaller a physical product. CDs have long held 80 minutes and some now hold even more without loss of quality; vinyl always had difficulty reaching 60 minutes, and most classical vinyl records contained far less than that – about 45 minutes was the norm. Now that CDs themselves are a long-established medium (and being supplanted for many listeners by digital-only releases), some recordings are emerging that, for various reasons, return to the vinyl era in terms of total length. New ones from Blue Griffin Recordings and Freedom Road Records are cases in point: each lasts 47 minutes, and each is designed to present six contemporary works focusing on a specific instrument plus accompaniment. 

     The accompaniment on the trumpet-focused recording featuring Jason Crafton is usually piano, played by Richard Masters, but not always. The first piece, John D’earth’s Invisible Drummer, is a three-movement work for trumpet and jazz bass (Paul Langosch). The jazz orientation of the work is no surprise in light of the chosen instruments; and the trumpet’s licks are scarcely unexpected. The extended solo of the second movement, before the bass creeps in, is especially well-done, but the least derivative and most rhythmically interesting movement is the third, which goes beyond traditional jazz in some creative ways. Next on the CD is Carl Roskott’s single-movement Concerto for Two Trumpets, with Peyden Shelton on second trumpet. The insistent doubling of the trumpets gives fanfare-like flare to the work, whose piano part underlines and at times contrasts with the trumpets’ sound. David Sampson’s Counterwork intriguingly adds marimba (Annie Stevens) as well as piano to the trumpet, but despite the interesting aural possibilities, the piece never quite gels and seems rather unfocused. Dwight Bigler’s Three Appalachian Folk Hymns is for trumpet and piano. The comparatively straightforward simplicity on display here – in Land of Rest, O’ Thou in Whose Presence, and A Morning Song – is a welcome contrast with some of the more-ambitious rhythmic and harmonic approaches of several other pieces on the disc. Bigler’s piece has nothing to prove, and as a result Crofton is able to present the music with pleasant lyrical sensitivity; and the piano part, especially in the third hymn, is particularly appealing. Kelly Roshum’s Roshi, for trumpet and marimba (Stevens), produces some rather strange sounds in the instrumental combination, as if the two performers are disconnected rather than playing cooperatively. Kent Holliday’s Double Entendre, for two trumpets (Shelton on the second one) and piano, concludes the CD with considerable force and a touch more dissonance than is really necessary to make its points. No work here stands substantially above the others; all are interesting explorations of combinatorial trumpet sounds, and the disc’s length makes it into a kind of sampler both of modern works for trumpet and of music by composers who share a geographical location. 

     Janet Axelrod’s recording tries to encompass even more elements of contemporary music. The six works on the CD, all of them Axelrod commissions, are all by Broadway composers – that is, ones who share a metaphorical geography and, at least at showtime, a geographical one as well. In addition, all the pieces are for flute and piano; and in all cases but one, the composer is the pianist on this CD. That certainly gives an air of the definitive to the production, but it is left to the music itself to appeal or not appeal to potential audiences. Touch and Go by Joshua Rosenblum, a pleasantly meandering piece in mixed tempos, gives Axelrod plenty of chances to explore the full range of the flute as well as its expressive potential in multiple rhythms. The piano leads the flute as often as it is led by it. Jump Scher(z) by David Chase, titled as a pun on the horror-movie cliché of the “jump scare,” does indeed toss in periodic unexpected chords amid legato material, and its pacing varies from slow to tarantella. It is inconsequential but enjoyable. Mary-Mitchell Campbell’s fueille dans un ruisseau (“Leaf in a Stream” – one of those modern works with the affectation of avoiding capital letters in its title) drifts along pleasantly enough in both instruments, going not much of anywhere, like a leaf caught in a current that eventually ends in stasis. Gary Adler’s For Harvey…(A Theatrical Fancy for Flute and Piano), titled and punctuated just that way, is less pretentious than its title: it is a modestly lyrical, moderately warm exploration of some emotional realms that, if scarcely deep, are heartfelt – this is a work that really does sound like something composed for a Broadway show. Georgia Stitt’s Duet for Flute and Piano #1 has somewhat similar sensibilities and somewhat comparable emotional resonance. Here Axelrod gets to handle long melodic lines with very sure breath control, and the flute – mostly in its middle range – shows its warmly expressive side. Joseph Church’s Oasis, the final and by far the longest work on this disc, is the only one featuring a pianist other than the composer: Elizabeth DiFelice is at the keyboard. This piece is in three movements with the fairly traditional classical tempo indications of Lazily, Scherzando and Molto adagio, but the work’s sound skews more to the avant-garde than that of any other piece heard on the CD. Blips and single-note exclamations amid fast-changing tempos permeate the first movement, which ends perkily rather than lazily; the oddball rocking motion at the start of the second movement soon leads to some instrumental back-and-forths that justify the “joke” meaning of the chosen tempo; and the expressiveness (somewhat overdone) that opens and dominates the finale has a gentle forward impetus that, however, tends to lose its way as the movement progresses to its flute-fluttery concluding portion. In all these works, Axelrod plays with engagement, sensitivity and fine technique; and the comparatively short length of the disc actually seems quite sufficient to explore these pieces – none of which stands head-and-shoulders above the rest. 

     Even shorter than these two recordings is one from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts that showcases three contemporary woodwind works in performances by the Zéphyros Winds chamber group. This is a half-hour recording featuring three composers whose pieces unashamedly require listeners to familiarize themselves with and understand a variety of extramusical concepts – and to be as interested in the nonmusical material as in the notes that are played. Thus, The Light Is the Same (2017) by Reena Esmail (born 1983) uses two different Hindustani ragas as philosophical touchpoints for the 13^th-century musings of Sufi mystic and poet Rūmī on the underlying oneness of God despite the many religions and spiritual paths through which people reach out for greater meaning and more-complete understanding. The entirety of the conception is then supposed to resonate with contemporary sociopolitical issues. This is a lot of freight to load onto a nine-minute piece for woodwinds, and it is somewhat surprising to find that the work itself is considerably more melodic and less pretentious than the gloss of philosophical importance supposed to be attached to it. In fact, heard simply as music, with no attempt to probe its underlying intended meaningfulness, the work is a pleasant blending of varying woodwind sounds, proceeding at a deliberate pace through gentle undulations. It is more straightforwardly pleasing than its foundational reasons for being would suggest. Desert Pass (2023) by Tyson Gholston Davis (born 2000), here given its world première recording, is a shorter work – seven minutes – but seems longer because of its determination to produce interlocking dissonances among the instruments at the expense of any significant forward motion. The work’s title is that of a 1976 painting by Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), and familiarity with the artist’s oeuvre and with this specific painting is necessary for understanding and appreciation of the music – which intends to translate the flow of the canvas into sound. This is a rarefied concept involving an art work with which very few listeners are likely to be as familiar as is the composer. Heard on its own, without knowledge of the painting, the piece swells and subsides, expands and contracts, flows a bit and pinpoints a bit, and ultimately has no sense of a particular destination. It is an assemblage of sounds rather than a convincing musical structure. Whether it adequately reflects its source material will be a matter to be discussed among members of any audience that has sufficient familiarity with the specific Frankenthaler work that inspired the music. The longest piece on the CD, lasting 15 minutes, is Tatu (2018) by David Sanford (born 1963). This is one of those combinatorial works intended to reach across genres while pushing instruments and the techniques of their players beyond their usual limits. Drawing on sources including Miles Davis, Karlheinz Stockhausen and filmmakers Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth, the material meanders here and there, mildly comprehensibly, sounding sometimes a bit like the “space music” of György Ligeti, sometimes like an étude for one woodwind or another, sometimes like a concatenation of sounds that just happen, as if incidentally, to be musical. There is certainly an “in group” audience attracted to avant-garde music for its own sake, and Tatu will likely appeal to its members even if they are not fully cognizant of the work’s reasons for being. But for a wider audience and when heard in purely musical terms and without reference to all the matters on which it draws, the piece seems to have little to express and to spend rather too much time expressing it – although it must be said that the members of Zéphyros Winds dedicate themselves fully to it, as they do to the other works on this disc. 

     Fans of modern chamber music that focuses on wind instruments will hear much that is interesting on these recordings, although it may be that the works will be of greater interest to performers seeking an expansion of their repertoire than to audiences that are less than fully committed to the sounds on offer. All the discs do have value as samplers of a sort; and if there is a valid generalization that can be made about the explorations of little-known contemporary music on these three CDs, it is that sometimes the modest length of a release fits well with the modest pleasures it brings.

(++++) YOU AND ME TUBE

Ms. Rachel and the Special Surprise. By Ms. Rachel (Rachel Anne Accurso). Illustrated by Monique Dong. Random House. $19.99. 

     The ongoing attempt to figure out where books fit in an increasingly digital universe continues to lead to a sort of cross-pollination between social-media personalities and authors of ink-on-paper works. These meldings work well at times, not so well at others – but books for very young children do seem to be a fertile field for the mixtures, allowing kids to have off-screen access to characters they have already met and become familiar with in digital-display environments. “Ms. Rachel,” a YouTube personality and educator best known for creating the charmingly titled “Songs for Littles” – a kids’ music series intended to foster language development among infants, toddlers, and preschoolers – turns out to work rather well as an on-paper character in Ms. Rachel and the Special Surprise, the first book of a planned series. 

     Unlike many children’s titles that leave it to adults to ferret out the educational purpose of the story, this book makes matters explicit in multiple ways. Its subtitle (or subhead, if you will) is “Encouraging Speech and Learning Through Play and Music,” so grown-ups know before even opening the book what it is supposed to do. The cover also displays a sticker-like design with the words “Practice 20 Milestones!” So the whole concept is built around specific goal-setting and knowledge attainment. And the last page of the book, aimed entirely at adults, is titled “Ms. Rachel’s Tips for Language and Brain Development!” Clearly more than a little thought has gone into figuring out the benefits that Ms. Rachel and the Special Surprise is intended to deliver. 

     Without appealing to very young children, though, the book will accomplish exactly nothing, so it is nice to find out that it works well simply as a pleasant experience for very young readers and pre-readers. Monique Dong’s engaging illustrations show the book version of Ms. Rachel searching through a large number of boxes in a hunt for “something really special,” opening box after box to find items that inspire songs and simple rhymes. The first box, for example, contains a model of a school bus, leading to a page with some words from the song, “The wheels on the bus.” But this is not the “special surprise,” so Ms. Rachel says goodbye to the bus and tries another box. The second one smells nice and contains a “pretend piece of bubble gum” – encouraging children to imagine what a real piece would be like and what a mess it would be to “blow a really big bubble” that then pops. This leads to some lyrics about “icky sticky sticky sticky bubble gum” and a continuing search for the “special surprise elsewhere.” 

     The book proceeds this way throughout, with boxes opening, Miss Rachel interacting with their contents and inviting readers to do so as well, Miss Rachel saying goodbye to every box’s contents, and Miss Rachel eventually teaching that when you cannot find what you are looking for, it is fine to ask for help – which she gets in the form of the Muppet-like Herbie. A few more false starts ensue, after which Miss Rachel and Herbie eventually “open” a box that is actually labeled “special surprise” and contains a mirror (a shiny, safe reflective design with protective film over it). So the special surprise turns out to be the smile of the child reading the book – and Miss Rachel and Herbie can say goodbye to that with a suitably upbeat final message. 

     Thankfully, the story progresses well on its own, and there is no attempt to force-feed the “20 milestones” referred to on the cover – although for anyone counting, the “Tips” page at the end includes, yes, 20 specific items that are packed into the book. The soft-pedaling of the educational/developmental elements – while making it possible for adults who are so inclined to locate them within the story and practice them in connection with the book or after reading it – makes this a neatly participatory offering that will appeal to young children and potentially be genuinely useful for them as well. So far, the usefulness record of books drawing on digital life is at best mixed: reading and watching are inherently different experiences, and a great deal of material works well in one form but not another. Ms. Rachel and the Special Surprise, however, is a genuinely thoughtful adaptation of informative entertainment from one realm to another, and as such could be the harbinger of a genuinely engaging series of value to kids and adults alike.

(++++) THE VARIEGATED SONATA

Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 30-32. Young Hyun Cho, piano. Sony. $15.99. 

Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 12-15. Young Hyun Cho, piano. Blue Griffin Recordings. $15.99. 

Allen Sapp: Piano Sonatas II, III (two performances), IV, V, VI and VIII; Suite for Piano; Fantasy III—Homage to Mendelssohn. Norma Bertolami Sapp, piano; Allen Sapp, piano (second performance of Sonata III). Navona. $16.99 (2 CDs). 

     The start of a new recorded cycle of Beethoven’s piano sonatas tells a great deal about the pianist’s thinking and the likely approach to be followed as the sequence unfolds. Many pianists choose not to handle the sonatas chronologically or numerically (they are not quite the same thing), but look to specific groupings that they feel communicate relationships among the works – and elucidate their own relationship with Beethoven and the piano. Young Hyun Cho’s decision to initiate her Beethoven cycle with the final three sonatas is a particularly intriguing one, since this means her first disc, on Sony, focuses on the pinnacle of Beethoven’s work in this form and can reasonably raise the question of where the pianist can possibly go from there. The second Cho CD, from Blue Griffin Recordings, begins to answer that question by encapsulating a specific sonata grouping within Beethoven’s sequence – highlighting some of the composer’s thoughts on the form during one specific, tumultuous year. 

     Beethoven’s Sonatas Nos. 30-32 date to 1820-1822 and have the effect of surveying a wide musical landscape from the summit of a creative mountain that the composer scaled, not without considerable difficulty, in Sonata No. 29 – the second and much more extended of the two he labeled “Hammerklavier.” After completing No. 29 in 1818, Beethoven was silent on the piano-sonata front until he composed the final three, which share a sense of transcendence despite differing in many ways. Polyphony abounds in these works – No. 31 actually contains two fugues in its finale – and the variation form, in which the finales of Nos. 30 and 32 are written, is prominent. All three of the final sonatas build toward their concluding, longest movements, but they arrive there by different routes. Cho’s interpretations do an excellent job of exploring the ways in which the sonatas differ as well as those in which they are loosely related. From the delicate cascading opening of No. 30, through the brief and intense second movement, Cho leads to a finale whose variations are fascinatingly complex: each sounds self-contained, and Cho allows each to form its own world, but each also exists within the purview of an overall concept of which Cho never loses sight. In No. 31, Cho effectively explores the sonata’s many moods, from its simple opening chords through its pervasive emotional warmth to its distinctly operatic finale, which includes a remarkable passage in which the note A is repeated no fewer than 28 times, as if Beethoven intends to explore all the emotive possibilities of a single piano tone. In the two-movement No. 32, Cho opens with grandeur and intensity somewhat akin to that of the Beethoven symphony written in the same key as this sonata, C minor: Symphony No. 5. But the sonata goes in a very different direction from that of the symphony, eventually attaining not triumph but ethereality after a series of amazing variations (including a passage with distinctive proto-jazz rhythms) that conclude in a pastoral mood of contentment and satisfaction. 

     The sensitivity that Cho shows to Beethoven’s many moods and his musical world-building in the final sonatas is present as well in her performances of the four sonatas written in 1801. All of them bear titles: No. 12 is “Sonate mit dem Trauermarsch,” Nos. 13 and 14 are labeled “Sonata quasi una fantasia” with No. 14 further designated “Moonlight,” and No. 15 is “Pastoral.” Not all the labels are Beethoven’s, but all provide keys to elements of the sonatas’ forms of expression – which actually look forward in some interesting ways to Beethoven’s formal experimentation in his very last sonatas. Just one example: Sonata No. 12 has four movements, of which none is in sonata form. The formal elements of these sonatas, however, are not what primarily interest Cho, who – here as in her performances of Nos. 30-32 – is more focused on the works’ emotional content than on the formalities through which the emotive elements are produced. So No. 12 receives, among other things, a strongly rhythmic Scherzo followed by an impressively somber Marcia Funebre whose mood is relieved by the perpetuum mobile of the rondo finale. No. 13 has pervasive dreamlike qualities that Cho extracts with care and delicacy, without oversimplifying or understating anything. The contrast between the drift of the slow movement and the very down-to-earth finale is handled particularly well. In the hyper-popular No. 14, the only one of this grouping in three movements rather than four, Cho eschews any temptation to find something new and different to say about the thrice-familiar music. Instead, she presents it straightforwardly, with perhaps a bit more coolness than necessary – the rhythmic angularity of the Allegretto is a trifle overdone – and she allows the underlying crepuscular feeling of the music to contrast clearly with the more-varied tonal palette of No. 13. In No. 15, the extended first movement – the longest of any movement in these four sonatas – is broadly conceived and pervaded by a sense of unhurried stability. The three remaining movements explore a wider range of emotions that Cho addresses with care and sensitivity. Indeed, Cho’s carefully considered approach throughout the first two volumes of her Beethoven cycle is one of the most salient characteristics of her interpretations, and whets the appetite for the sonata groupings that are still to come. 

     The form of the piano sonata – stretched and shrunk and altered in innumerable ways over time – continues to fascinate composers even today, providing a format for expressive communication of all kinds. The sonatas of Allen Sapp (1922-1999) are well-served on a two-CD Navona release featuring live performances by Sapp’s wife, Norma Bertolami Sapp (1921-1995), who gave the premières of many of her husband’s solo-piano works. The music itself is far more time-limited than Beethoven’s – that is, it is generally written in structural forms and with harmonic expressions typical of the time period in which each sonata was produced, rather than in any especially innovative manner. Nevertheless, this (+++) release has much to recommend it not only for listeners who know Sapp’s work but also for ones seeking to broaden their musical horizons by exploring some less-known 20^th-century solo-piano writing. The Sapp sonatas offered here vary in length from around 14 minutes (Nos. V and VI) to twice that extent (No. VIII), but all have some characteristics of a suite: the movements, even when labeled in traditional ways, tend to be totally unrelated to each other and not to show any particular progress from start to finish. Of course, this is not an unusual approach for the time period in which Sapp wrote: Piano Sonata No. II dates to 1954-1956 and was revised in 1957; Nos. III and IV are from 1957; and then there is a significant compositional gap, with Nos. V and VI dating to 1980 and No. VIII to 1985, revised in 1986. Different dates aside, the sonatas have a great deal in common in the angularity and intensity of their themes, the harmonic freedom bordering on atonality with which they are written, their minimal concern with lyricism or emotional depth, and the performance power required to put across the movements that are most emphatically written. Those include the Agitato finale of No. III, the Decisively opening movement of No. IV, the Vehemently conclusion of No. VIII, and others. Sapp does configure some of his sonatas differently from the usual three-or-four-movement form: No. VI, like Beethoven’s No. 32, is in two movements – but in Sapp’s work, both movements are marked Allegro and are around the same seven-minute length, so the work sounds like an extended single movement. Sonata No. V is in one movement, which is as long as the two of No. VI put together. These two sonatas, from the same year, explore and re-explore much the same musical landscape, with Norma Bertolami Sapp’s strongly emphatic technique and her willingness to pound the keyboard when that is called for making for effective if rather aurally tiring presentations. In addition to the sonatas on these discs, and earlier than any of them, the Suite for Piano (1949) has more charm in its five short movements than do any of the sonatas. And although here too the musical language is pretty much mid-20^th-century standard, it is not used with a quality as acerbic as that of the sonatas: the quiet second-movement Adagio is even willing to reach for a certain level of emotional pathos. The latest-composed work offered here is also not a sonata. It is Fantasy III—Homage to Mendelssohn (1992), an oddly disconnected-sounding piece that is more an exercise in evanescence than a work relating in any meaningful way to the earlier composer. Listeners who do find these Sapp piano works engaging will be interested in hearing the composer’s own performance of Sonata No. III and contrasting it with his wife’s. Both versions can safely be labeled definitive in their own ways, but there are distinct differences between them: Norma Bertolami Sapp brings the many strongly percussive elements of the score to the forefront, while Allen Sapp focuses more on the quieter and less-intensely-emphatic elements. Anyone intrigued by the chance to explore a considerable amount of Allen Sapp’s piano music will find this contrast of two performances a welcome bonus to a skillfully presented set of readings of many of his solo-piano works.