GRETE SULTAN: THE LEGACY
LABOR RELEASES VOLUME 2 OF HISTORICAL RECORDINGS BY THE GREAT ÉMIGRÉ GERMAN-AMERICAN PIANIST


The long and eventful career of Grete Sultan has been capped by the release of the Grete Sultan legacy, two double albums of historical recordings of both classic works from the repertoire of European masterworks of the past and of new music from twentieth-century avant-garde composers. The first of these sets captured the imagination of press and public in both her adopted country, the United States, and her native Germany from which she fled the Nazis on the eve of World War II. Volume 2 contains a similar collection of moving and inspiring performances from a wide range of music in contrasting styles and techniques.
Just as a complete performance of the Bach Goldberg Variations formed the centerpiece for Volume 1, two late works by Beethoven - the monumental Diabelli Variations and the Six Bagatelles, Op. 126 - occupy the first of the two CDs that make up the new set. The second CD includes the Copland Piano Sonata, one of the major works in this form to be composed in this country, plus other piano works by Ben Weber, Stefan Wolpe, Alan Hovhaness and Tui St. George Tucker. As if this huge range were not enough, the album concludes with four of the John Cage Etudes Australes, composed for and dedicated to Ms. Sultan.
Ms. Sultan, who is in her mid-90s, has just received the Bundesverdienstkreuz Erster Klasse, the highest civilian honor given by the German government. She stopped performing and teaching only relatively recently but her remarkable legacy lives on in these recordings which reflect her place as one of the seminal figures in new-music and in keyboard performance in the latter half of the twentieth-century.
These recordings, mostly recorded live in New York in the 1960s and '70s, show the pianist at the peak of her performing career.


GRETE SULTAN: THE LEGACY, VOLUME 2
CD I:
Ludwig van Beethoven: 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op. 120
Six Bagatelles, Op. 126
CD II:
Aaron Copland: Piano Sonata
Ben Weber: Episodes
Stefan Wolpe: Form for Piano
Alan Hovhaness: Yenovk (The Troubadour), Partita for Pianoforte
Tui St. George Tucker: Tantum Ergo for piano
John Cage: Four Etudes Australes

see GRETE SULTAN: THE LEGACY, VOLUME 1

 

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