Leon Fleisher
Sessions’ From My Diary, and final thoughts on Leon Fleisher
By Daniel Felsenfeld
Just to prove that music can be “searching” in different ways, Leon Fleisher, ever the champion of the music of his own time, offers a sensitive and plangent reading of Roger Sessions’ most ruminative of pieces, From My Diary. This composer is one of the greats of the 20th Century, a legendary symphonist [...]
Schubert’s Piano Sonata, played by Leon Fleisher
By Daniel Felsenfeld
It is too easy to give certain pieces of music weight they might not warrant, freight them with essences far beyond the composer’s scope or intention (even if that composer happened to be music’s greatest genius ever, such as Franz Schubert). It is also easy to envision a great composer as a robed [...]
Copland’s Piano Sonata, played by Leon Fleisher
By Daniel Felsenfeld
When I was a young student composer, I was dazzled by Aaron Copland’s Piano Variations. Weren’t we all? Here was the mawkish composer of “cowboy chic” at his most radical, his most, dare I say, atonal. In these sacred variations, he spun a chunk of what I came to later understand as a [...]