Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 05/19/2010, uploaded on 08/27/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Sonata in F Major Op. 46          Dmitri Kabalevsky

Allegro con moto; Andante cantabile; Allegro giocoso

Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky was born in St Petersburg in 1904. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory, graduating in composition (1929) then piano (1930).  As a composer, he found his mature style in two works which achieved international success: the Second Symphony (1934), championed by Arturo Toscanini and Malcolm Sargent; and his opera Colas Breugnon (1938), which combines neo-Classicism and Russian folk-music to dramatic effect.

For solo piano, Kabalevsky wrote three sonatas, two briefer neo-classical sonatinas, and twenty-four preludes.  The sonata heard today is the third, from 1946.  The first movement offers two themes.  A tense development section centers on the first of these themes, after which the second is freely reprised on the way to a coda that unexpectedly tapers off into silence. The slow movement is pervaded by a calmly unfolding theme which is given a certain gravitas by its methodical stepwise progression. The central section introduces a degree of emotional anxiety which is softened by a subtly elaborated return of the main theme and then thrown into relief by the inwardness of the coda. The finale presents an agile theme that takes on greater character as it unfolds. The central section builds real momentum, spilling over into a reprise of the initial idea and then a coda that steers the work towards its hectic conclusion.

Gabriele Baldocci 

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.