Search - Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Constance Keene :: Johann Nepomuk Hummel: Complete Piano Sonatas, Vol. 2

Delightful performance of two great sonatas

Yandi Dharmadi | Houston, TX | 03/31/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Johann Nepomuk Hummel is little known in today's "mainstream" classical music, but in his time he was a very famous and respectable composer-pianist whose technical mastery had been said to be rivaled only by Beethoven. Hummel was also a pupil of Mozart, the successor of Haydn as Kappelmeister at the Esterhazy palace, and the original dedicatee of Schubert's last three piano sonatas. Hummel's music may not have the genius of Mozart or the striking originality of Beethoven, but it never lacks charm and spontaneity. The C major sonata op. 38 is a homage to Mozart, as evident in the various themes "borrowed" from the K.330 Sonata, Haffner symphony, 25th piano concerto, and Figaro, among others. Mozartian but unmistakably Hummel, this work contains outbursts of difficult passageworks so unusual in the classical treatment of sonata.Schumann is said to have wished that he could play the F# sonata op. 91, a dramatic, ambitious work of grand proportion and a "technical minefield" suffused with crossed-hands, rapid leaps, and rising double notes. Brooding melancholy and unexpected modulations characterizing this piece foreshadow the late romantic sonatas of Schubert. The delicate and disciplined approach taken by Constance Keene is well suited to Hummel's often florid and contrapuntal writing. However, at times one is left wanting for more spontaneity and 'con fuoco', particularly in the F# minor sonata."