Ludus Tonalis has some competition in the record catalogue, but Martin Perry’s can stand comparison with any I’ve encountered. 87 then you are likely to respond well to Ludus Tonalis, which is ironic since it was in part written in response to that composer’s Seventh Symphony, seen by both Hindemith and Bartók as loathsome in its nationalist character. If you like Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues Op. The work is a set of fugues and interludes, framed by a Praeludium and Postludium which might seem like an intolerably dry academic exercise, but Hindemith’s sense of character and feel for wit and generous if complex harmonic deliciousness makes this into a feast of surprisingly approachable piano music. Paul Hindemith’s Ludus Tonalis – Studies in Counterpoint, Tonal Organisation & Piano Playing is certainly another tour de force, composed while the composer was living in the United States after escaping Nazi persecution. This sonata is the kind of feverishly expressionist and imaginative work that grows on you the more you discover about it, and is certainly a remarkable creation for a composer of 70 – you would probably place it as an intensely youthful tour de force if encountering it on a blind hearing. The second Adagio molto movement has a quietness of atmosphere and a melancholic beauty that builds to intense climaxes – a masterpiece of emotional landscaping that can take you anywhere your imagination fancies, though where you end up is unlikely to be all sunshine and rainbows. 1, and returning to Weisgall there is quite a hefty dose of the Romantic to be heard, especially in the first movement. With greater extremes in all directions, one can hear this as an extension of something like Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata Op. We are gifted greater clarity in this regard in the opening of the final Rondo quasi presto, but not for long. The ‘difficulty’ here is not so much grappling with angular fistfuls of notes, but Weisgall’s apparent freedom with rhythm. There is a logical sense of flow, and once you become acclimatised it becomes clear that each movement has an architecture that builds in ways not entirely dissimilar to classical examples. The result is one of intellectual rigour mixed with a keen sense of the dramatic. Weisgall’s idiom is ‘post-tonal’ though not dogmatically serial. There are some vocal works that have also been recorded, but while acknowledged as a significant composer Weisgall could hardly be considered mainstream.Īllan Kozinn’s booklet notes considers this Sonata for Piano an “undiscovered gem,” and it certainly is a work with a powerful effect. He is best known for his operas, fragments of one appearing on the Naxos label ( review). Hugo Weisgall is unlikely to be a familiar name to most readers. March 2016, Studzinski Recital Hall, Bowdoin College. While not for everyone, those listeners who do try Zarukin's Ludus Tonalis will be blown away.Support us financially by purchasing this from Zarukin plays with strength and sensitivity and the recording captures it with vivid immediacy. The only reality here is Zarukin's performance on this recording and that performance on this recording is simply magnificent. Whether it would work in concert performed by an orchestra is beside the point. Pavel Zarukin has concocted a captivating orchestral arrangement of the work, has executed it convincingly on the synthesizer, and has performed it compellingly on this recording. But now that it's here, the world can only be grateful because, as unlikely as it seems, this is one heck of a performance of Ludus Tonalis. Was the world really crying out for an orchestral transcription of Paul Hindemith's Ludus Tonalis performing on the Roland XP-50? Probably not: in fact, the world probably was not crying out for any performance at all of Hindemith's twentieth century Art of the Fugue, much less an orchestral arrangement played on a synthesizer. Why this recording exists is anybody's guess.
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