EVGENY KISSIN

Dated 1814, Beethoven’s two-movement Piano Sonata No. 27 was his first with movement headings in German rather than Italian. Designating character rather than tempo, they call for the E minor first movement to be played ‘with liveliness, and with feeling and expression throughout,’ while the E major second should be taken ‘not too swiftly, and conveyed in a singing manner.’ Chopin’s wistful F sharp minor Nocturne of 1841 sets a recitative-like central section within flowing outer ends. His sombre Fantaisie in F minor from the same year also contains improvisatory-feeling sections, along with echoes of a Polish revolution song from the November Uprising. Brahms’s four literary-influenced early-career Ballades of 1854, arranged in two major-minor pairs (D and B), open on a darkly ancient-sounding creation inspired by the Scottish poem, ‘Edward’. There’s a more acerbic bite to the D minor darkness of Prokofiev’s tense Second Piano Sonata, which premiered in 1914. Stylistically wide-ranging, its third movement appears to suggest the Dies irae, while the Vivace finale contains jazz influences.