Ernst Hettrich

Following Schumann's fi rst, evidently unsuccessful attempt at composing a 'Sonata' - he only had the opening movement published under the title 'Allegro in b minor' - he tried once again in 1833. It...

Through the amiable genre of the 'sonatina', generations of piano pupils have slowly and cautiously approached its 'big sister', the sonata. With the aid of our three-volume selection of sonatinas fro...

As is the case with quite a few of his works, there are two versions of Schumann's opus 14 - a three-movement 'Concert sans Orchestre' from 1836 and a 'Grande Sonate' in five movements from 1853. We d...

The great pianist Paul Badura-Skoda counts the first movement of this B-flat major sonata K. 333 as 'among the most beautiful … in the piano literature.' And who would want to contradict him? What a p...

Those wishing to get to know Mozart's gentle, slightly elegiac side should play the opening movement of this lesser-known piano sonata K. 570. The second movement, too, marries the calm strains of hor...

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, on his return journey from Scotland in late summer 1829, spent a few sublimely beautiful days with the Taylor family in Wales. The 'Trois Fantaisies ou Caprices op. 16' fo...

Everywhere only confused combinations of figures, dissonances, passages - in short, for us torture' - Schumann certainly did not deserve this contemporary slating. He only published the opening moveme...

Liszt's most important piano work was written in 1853, during a time of great compositional productivity and at the same time as the Ballade in B minor. It has something in common with the latter work...

This 'No. 1' of Mozart's eighteen total piano sonatas is nevertheless not the very first one that he composed. It is well known that the 'Wunderkind' Mozart had previously written at least four piano...

Curiously enough, only one of Mozart's eighteen piano sonatas (and also only one of his 23 piano concerti) is in the pianistically rewarding key of G major: the sonata K. 283. It numbers among those s...

Whoever has experienced a major pianist performing this sonata live (the slow 'Andante cantabile' middle movement is occasionally played as an encore) knows the grandeur and effect of this C major wor...

From Mozart's letters we know that he made firm plans in the summer of 1789 to earn money by composing six new easy piano sonatas for Princess Friederike of Prussia. Only this one was written, however...

Robert Schumann was fascinated by the violin virtuoso Nicolò Paganini, as were many composers of the time. When he was planning a piano tutor in 1832/33 that was to include his own works as well as th...

This 'little' D-major sonata is somewhat the pansy (or violet?) among Mozart's eighteen piano sonatas. It is 'little' in dimensions when compared to the two other sonatas in the same key of D major (K...

We have begun with numbers 2 and 6: in the coming years we will be producing editions of all of Franz Liszt's 'Hungarian Rhapsodies', brilliant pianistic excesses and a favourite with all virtuosos. H...

Liszt's ninth Rhapsody is the 'Carnival at Pest' - one of the few Hungarian Rhapsodies to which he gave a name. Once again Liszt turns to Hungarian folk melodies and fuses them with improvisatory elem...

This work, in which Liszt draws on five different folk themes, is surely one of his most ingenious Hungarian Rhapsodies. It offers a unique mix of melancholy, glittering keyboard acrobatics and stormy...

The Rákóczi march is often referred to as the 'Hungarian Marseillaise'. The beginnings of this march song go back to around 1730. In the text, the Hungarians summon Franz II Rákóczi to free his people...

The high opus number suggests that it is a late work, yet in reality the work comprises twenty single movements which were composed 10 to 15 years before publication. This means that they were written...

There were two reasons behind Weber's hesitation to perform his opus 79, known as 'Concert Piece' in public. As he wrote to the music journalist Friedrich Rochlitz, experience had shown that concertos...

'... as your bride, you must indeed dedicate something further to me, and I know of nothing more tender than these 3 Romances, in particular the middle one, which is the most beautiful love duet.' It...

Schumann kept coming back to variation form. He often wrote his own variations in contrast to those on popular (operatic) themes, with which piano virtuosi of the time flooded the market. The 'Impromp...

The Novelettes arose at roughly the same time as the Kinderszenen and share the same largely untroubled mood. Writing to Clara Wieck, Schumann could exclaim 'I've written such a frightful amount of mu...

Following Schumann's move to the Rhine, where he had become the musical director of the Düsseldorf Music Society, times became hard for him. Despite several initial successes, he increasingly encounte...

'Even for me it is a strange and wonderful fact that almost every motif which forms within me bears the characteristics for multiple contrapuntal combinations', Schumann wrote to Mendelssohn. 1845 was...