Sergei Lyapunov ‒ Piano Sonata,

Sergei Lyapunov (1859 - 1924), Piano Sonata, (1906 - 1908) Performed by Nicholas Walker 00:00 - No. 1 Allegro appassionato 03:33 - No. 2 Un poco meno mosso 08:11 - No. 3 Andante sostenuto e molto espressivo 14:34 - No. 4 Allegro vivo - Tempo I - Andante maestoso Clearly the longer a work is, the harder it proves to achieve the sort of standards in live performance required to approve it for CD release. Though he never studied with the Master himself, Lyapunov was a great admirer of Liszt. His compositions were to inspire Lyapunov to add a further twelve to the Hungarian’s famous Transcendental Studies, using the keys Liszt had ignored. Structurally Liapunov’s F-minor work also owes much to Liszt’s B minor sonata, but it is of course much less known in fact it has continued to languish in almost total obscurity. This may also have something to do with the considerable technical demands it places on the performer: in the only extant recording of the work the valiant interpreter takes some ten minutes longer than Nicholas Walker in Husum in order to squeeze in the tonents of notes! True, Lyapunov’s sonata bears conspicuous traces of Liszt’s ’Benediction Dieu’, ’Mazeppa’ and other works, but it also demonstrates considerable resourcefulness in both structural and of course pianistic terms. Many Liszt pupils felt obliged to inflict sonatas on posterity, partly because of the composers’ difficulties in coming to terms with the discipline of their structural requirements, but also owing to the lbrm’s expressive potential having been exhausted in the hamonic idiom of the late 19th century.