The Piano Concerto was composed a few years after the Sonata. When it was created in Strasbourg, it sparked a small scandal, a scandal that is actually quite incomprehensible today. The work strikes once again with its dramatic progression, a progression which reserves for the piano a role that is both central and peripheral. Formidably expressive and of an implacable formal construction, it deserves to be played more often… A big thank you to Pascal Gallet for this rare record, remarkably interpreted.

In addition to this, you will need to know more about it.

We cannot put aside the quasi-jouissance that this music produces, precisely because it functions both on the ground of language (the structure which directs us) and on a more archaic energy (the sound continuum which grabs us). This is particularly evident in the First Sonata, but it is also true in the Concerto.

In addition to this, you will need to know more about it.

ARTE

If Grieg refocuses on small forms after having dabbled in the sonata form, there are two reasons: on the one hand, he is not at ease with the development, a technique which restricts him in his poetic impulses and 'imagination; on the other hand, the work of variations in which it flourishes is also best suited to popular material, whose short sentences are repeated, juxtaposed, but never going to development. It is perhaps also a Norwegian cultural characteristic, as the composer suggests in a letter to his editor in 1889: “We are Germans from the North, and we share with all Germans a strong propensity to melancholy and reverie.

Meguelone

A trip with the "political" Chopin of the Poles, the nostalgic of the Mazurkas, and the famous Sonata No. 2 called "funeral". The movement which bears this name was written before the sonata; it is he who serves as his creative basis (it was played at Chopin's funeral in the Church of the Madeleine) - Pascal Gallet (complete piano music by Jolivet at Maguelone) presents us with a reading without qualms , inexorable of this sonata. "

In this slow-paced funeral program without any monotony, he constructs each story with a real flexibility of touch and subtly combines softness and strength avoiding any overload (Polonaise op. 44). In this relevant approach, there is a desire to tell Chopin's story, but with a certain distance from the emotional content of each page (trio of the funeral march of Op. 35). Instead of saying or affirming, Pascal Gallet suggests!

Piano Magazine