Complete Piano Sonatas, Volume 4

The budget Brilliant Classics label issued the Complete Piano Sonatas of Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812) on nine CDs between 2018 and '20. I have volumes three and four. The task was split between nine different performers, all of them playing on fortepianos, that is, on restored instruments dating from around the composer's heyday, or on modern copies made to emulate them: these having a different, more rinky-dink sound to a modern concert grand.

On Volume Three, the fortepianist is Alexei Lubimov, a musician whose name I already knew well, whereas on Volume Four, Tuija Hakkila does the honours, a Finnish pianist whose name was new to me. To my mind, both musicians acquit themselves with similar distinction. The four pieces on this disc, all of them two-movment sonatas, date from several phases of Dussek's itenerant career, from 1788 when he was in pre-revolutionary Paris, to 1806-7, when he was based in Hamburg.

My favorite of the four is the Op. 43 Sonata in A from 1800, especially the stately & memorable theme in its allegro moderato first movement, but the whole disc is enjoyable. It has been claimed that the practice of playing piano sideways on-stage originated with Dussek "so that the ladies could admire his handsome profile", a suggestion not necessarily corroborated by the available pictorial evidence.

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