Gianluca Faragli - Ries Grande Sonata Fantasia L'infortunée, Fantasies (2024) [Official Digital Download]

New recordings of large-scale but little-known works by one of Beethoven’s most influential students.

Born like his teacher-to-be in the German city of Bonn, Ferdinand Ries studied with Beethoven in Vienna for several years during the first decade of the 19th century. He also worked for Beethoven as a copyist and secretary, and in 1838, shortly before his own death at the age of 53, published the first authoritative account of his master’s life. But Ries was far more than a mere amanuensis, as a series of releases on Brilliant Classics has documented, with valuable modern recordings of solo, chamber and instrumental music.

Ries’s own instrument was naturally the piano, and his catalogue of works for the instrument spans light-hearted miniatures and ambitiously scaled, dramatic sonatas, much as Beethoven’s did. In the latter category falls the Grande Sonata Fantasia which Ries composed in 1811 (the same year as Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony). It is easy enough to hear the turbulent textures and melodic shapes of his teacher’s famous ‘Pathétique’ Sonata in the background, but Ries could exercise his own imagination, which in any case was shaped by travel far beyond the lands around Vienna, unlike Beethoven.

TRACKLIST

1. Gianluca Faragli - Fantasie nach Schiller's Gedicht "Resignation", Op. 109
2. Gianluca Faragli - Introduction and Rondeau à la zingaresco, Op. 184
3. Gianluca Faragli - Fantasy on Themes from "Le Nozze di Figaro", Op. 77: I. No. 1
4. Gianluca Faragli - Fantasy on Themes from "Le Nozze di Figaro", Op. 77: II. No. 2
5. Gianluca Faragli - Grande sonata fantasia "l'infortunée", Op. 26: I. Adagio con espressione — Allegro molto agitato
6. Gianluca Faragli - Grande sonata fantasia "l'infortunée", Op. 26: II. Andante
7. Gianluca Faragli - Grande sonata fantasia "l'infortunée", Op. 26: III. Finale. Presto



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