Reubke: Works For Piano & Organ

Paolo Marzocchi (Klavier),Luca Scandali / Ladegast-Orgel des Schweriner Doms

The release of Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor this month is also the fitting occasion for the release of the Piano Sonata in B flat minor by his pupil Julius Reubke, a work bristling with horrendous technical challenges that have brought it a certain notoriety of its own. Reubke studied piano and composition with Liszt from 1854 to 1856, but fate was not kind to this young man of frail health. He died at the age of twenty-four in 1858 in Pillnitz, near Dresden, after having moved there only a few months earlier in order to seek a cure for an acute lung ailment. Reubke can be described as the embodiment of the romantic artist – a man on the run, fueled by an overpowering inner fire and consumed by its flames. Reubke’s piano sonata is completely orchestral in its conception – which is why he takes the instrument to the very limits of its tone-color capacity. It is thus only logical for it to have found its counterpart in an organ sonata, a musical setting of Psalm 94 of almost a half hour in duration. In its formal and harmonic shape as well as in its motivic work the organ sonata again reveals the influence of Liszt and Wagner. A significant and unique contribution to the organ literature!

Price: $20.98