This fascinating recital reveals Dussek – a colourful character and favourite of Marie-Antoinette whose talents took him throughout Europe and Russia – as “revolutionary in his approach to both composition and pianism” and makes a persuasive argument for Dussek’s influence on Chopin.
In his informative booklet notes, Michael Dussek makes the case for his namesake’s music being the product of a composer “very much ahead of his time in the development of a Romantic piano style”. The recording’s centrepiece is the Op. 35 Piano Sonatas (Nos. 11-13), the B-flat major Sonata a crucible of ideas accommodating the rustic lyricism of his native Bohemia, a contrapuntal sophistication that would find full flowering in his later Messe Solennelle, and an anticipation of what would become a Chopin signature. The G major Sonata boasts melodic expressiveness, virtuoso passagework, a harmonic boldness that Schubert would later more fully exploit and a Rondo finale that out-Haydns Haydn. The Sonata in C minor strikingly blends Beethoven, Chopin and a joyful village dance to conclude a “gloriously innovative triptych”. Completing the recording are two pinnacles of the piano repertoire: Chopin’s exquisite Nocturne, Op. 15 No. 2, and the lyrical, rapturously intense Ballade No. 1 in G minor.
Michael Dussek’s previous SOMM recordings include volumes of chamber music by Frank Bridge and Jacques Ibert with the Bridge Quartet. © SOMM Recordings