Beethoven's final sonatas with preludes by Chopin, Shostakovich and Bach

Over four decades, James Lisney’s musical integrity and pianistic command have fuelled a career that has taken him seamlessly from concerto and recital soloist – to chamber musician and pianist director. Initiatives, such as his highly acclaimed Beethoven Project in Amsterdam, Leipzig, and Berlin - or his many recordings - have provided a platform for his wide-ranging musical sympathies.

Programme

Fryderyk Chopin                       Prelude, opus 45

Ludwig van Beethoven           Sonata in E, opus 109

Dmitri Shostakovich                Preludes, opus 34, nos 10-12

Ludwig van Beethoven           Sonata in A flat, opus 110

 

Johann Sebastian Bach                        ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’  BWV 147 (arranged Myra Hess)

                                                                         Ricercare a 3 from the Musical Offering, BWV 1079

Ludwig van Beethoven                          Sonata in c, opus 111

 

Lisney...made of these sonatas a phoenix, boundlessly expressing a glorious rebirth of Beethoven’s creativity, re-animating the very phrases of his musical processes in all their enchanting, mercurial, forceful, kaleidoscopic variety – brusque and blunt, longing and tender, ineffable and sublime. One felt that all emotions human-beings had ever felt were incomparably here – and, further, some that had been felt only by this extraordinary man and, maybe, just a few others. Lisney gave us a journey of the soul.

- The Classical Source

This is someone who can really give the mechanical box of wires and wood a singing soul.

- The Telegraph