A sumptuous album!
Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 08/22/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
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Once more, the egregious presence of Robert Schumann emerges with a formidable exponent of his art - Volker Banfield - who performed a singular versoion of these three piano sonatas.
Banfield plays with admirable interpretative solvency and remarks with genuine excellence the intinmate universe of this composer, the real personification of the purest romantic spirit in XIX Century.
The performances are genuinely played, without those well known overdoses of cheap sentimentalism or even worst overindulgence ; he achieves with stubborn eloquence the tribulation, anguish and despair of this composer.
The best achievement of the set is the third sonata, who acquires a personal vision under his wonderful playing. It's absolutely incredible how this work has been neglected by most pianists; filled with a sort of incorporeal quality of being dramatic, sharp inflections that suggest us premonitory landscapes of enigmatic and sophisticated lyricism.
I would like you to recommend, to get this album. It's rewarding.
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