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Piano Sonatas

Alban Berg composer
Ludwig van Beethoven composer
Aaron Copland composer

Daniel Linder piano

Release Date: January 10, 2025
Catalog #: NV6661
Format: Digital
20th Century
Classical
Romantic
Solo Instrumental
Piano

Highly-acclaimed pianist Daniel Linder makes his Navona Records debut with PIANO SONATAS, presenting three offerings of masterworks by Alban Berg, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Aaron Copland. Berg’s Piano Sonata, Op. 1, demonstrates the young composer’s mastery of chromaticism and atonality under Schoenberg’s tutelage. Beethoven’s Sonata in A Major, Op. 101 is a testament to his late-period experimentation, blending Classical forms with expressive lyricism and cyclic structure. Copland’s Piano Sonata fuses his American populist style with jazz-inspired rhythmic motifs and open harmonies, encapsulating the expansive, introspective qualities of his mid-century work. Together, these pieces offer a rich study in contrasts and an inquiry into the celebrated tradition of the sonata form.

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Track Listing & Credits

# Title Composer Performer
01 Piano Sonata, Op. 1 Alban Berg Daniel Linder, piano 11:54
02 Piano Sonata in A Major, Op. 101: I. Etwas lebhaft und mit der innigsten Empfindung (Allegretto, ma non troppo) Ludwig van Beethoven Daniel Linder, piano 4:20
03 Piano Sonata in A Major, Op. 101: II. Lebhaft. Marschmäßig (Vivace alla Marcia) Ludwig van Beethoven Daniel Linder, piano 6:44
04 Piano Sonata in A Major, Op. 101: III. Langsam und sehnsuchtsvoll (Adagio, ma non troppo, con affetto) Ludwig van Beethoven Daniel Linder, piano 2:44
05 Piano Sonata in A Major, Op. 101: IV. Geschwind, doch nicht zu sehr, und mit Entschlossenheit (Allegro) Ludwig van Beethoven Daniel Linder, piano 8:30
06 Piano Sonata: I. Molto moderato Aaron Copland Daniel Linder, piano 9:25
07 Piano Sonata: II. Vivace Aaron Copland Daniel Linder, piano 5:28
08 Piano Sonata: III. Andante sostenuto Aaron Copland Daniel Linder, piano 11:04

Special thanks to:
Daniel Asia (Center for American Culture and Ideas)
Wenxin Guan
James Higgs
Ross Lipman
Lori Wiest (University of Arizona School of Music)

Recorded November 27, December 3-4, 2024, at Crowder Hall, the University of Arizona in Tucson AZ
Recording Session Producer Joshua Nichols
Recording Session Engineer, Editing & Mixing, Mastering Wiley Ross
Piano Technician Richard Woodruff

Executive Producer Bob Lord

VP of A&R Brandon MacNeil
A&R Danielle Sullivan

VP of Production Jan Košulič
Audio Director Lucas Paquette

VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Edward A. Fleming
Publicity Aidan Curran
Digital Marketing Manager Brett Iannucci

Artist Information

Daniel Linder

Pianist

Praised as a “pianistic chameleon” (Fanfare), Daniel Linder is a versatile pianist, chamber musician, and teaching artist. He has performed solo and collaborative recitals to high acclaim in venues across the United States and in the United Kingdom, France, and Denmark, and recordings of his performances have aired on KUAT Classical Radio in Tucson AZ. His accolades include the Fresno Musical Club Susan Torres Award, and prizes in the James Ramos International Competition, the Seattle International Piano Competition, and the Los Angeles International Liszt Competition, among others.

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Notes

As a student of Arnold Schoenberg and a core member of the Second Viennese School, Alban Berg explored atonality, developing variation, and serialism in his work. Berg’s compositional style straddles late Romanticism (as characterized by the works of Wagner and Mahler), and Modernism (as characterized by his colleagues Schoenberg and Webern), and is associated with the Expressionist movement. Expressionists adopted highly personal, subjective perspectives in their work, and explored distortion or amplification of materials to achieve an intense emotional effect. Edvard Munch, who painted The Scream in 1893, inspired the 20th-century Expressionists.

The Piano Sonata, Op. 1 is a student work which Berg composed and revised in 1909 while under the tutelage of Schoenberg. Although it is not in the typical Classical structure of three or four movements, the single movement is in traditional sonata-allegro form, with an exposition, development, and recapitulation. The sonata is a virtuosic application of Schoenberg’s concept of developing variation, as nearly all the motivic material in the sprawling movement is derived from the opening three measures. B Minor is the central key area of the sonata, but the wandering tonality is unstable and ambiguous until the closing bars due in part to Berg’s relentless application of chromaticism and whole-tone collections.

— Daniel Linder

Ludwig van Beethoven composed his final five piano sonatas, beginning with the Piano Sonata in A Major, Op. 101 between 1816 and 1822. In the last period of his work, Beethoven developed an increasingly unique voice as he continued to expand the established forms and harmonic language of the Viennese Classical style. His late works often feature expressive vocally inspired melodies, a personal harmonic language characterized by the exploration of dissonance, expanded register and dynamic range, and formal experimentation including cyclicism and references to Baroque forms such as fugue.

In his later works, Beethoven increasingly chose to write character indications for his compositions in his native German rather than Italian, which was the standard language of music in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Beethoven’s German indications in Op. 101 communicate deep and nuanced emotions which he may not have been able to express in Italian. For instance, he provides the instruction Langsam und sehnsuchtsvoll (slow and full of longing) for the third movement, and Geschwind, doch nicht zu sehr, und mit Entschlossenheit (Quickly, but not too much so, and with determination) for the final movement.

The Piano Sonata in A Major, Op. 101 is divided into four movements which can be conceptually grouped into two pairs alternating between introspective and extroverted music. The first movement is a condensed sonata-allegro form featuring flowing cantabile lines and counterpoint that evokes string quartet texture, while the second movement is a lively march with orchestral sonorities and dramatic shifts in register that explores the full range of the instrument. The third movement is an arioso interlude that flows — without break — into the fourth movement. The fourth and final movement is the largest and most dramatic of the sonata: an expansive sonata-allegro form featuring an extended fugato passage as the development.

One of the most captivating moments in the sonata is the seamless transition from the third movement into the fourth. The tragic longing of the third movement melts into a quiet recollection of the opening theme from the first movement, which then grows into the determined and life-affirming music of the fourth movement. The return of the opening theme from the first movement at this point in the sonata is one of the most celebrated examples of cyclicism in Beethoven’s compositional output, but this was not a new technique for him — in fact he had explored cyclicism in his piano sonatas as far back as 1802 in the Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 27 No. 1 (the sibling of the Moonlight Sonata, Op. 27 No. 2).

— Daniel Linder

Aaron Copland’s life and career spanned nearly the entire 20th century, and he is among the most influential American composers of all time. Copland grew up in Brooklyn and lived in Paris in the 1920s where he studied with Nadia Boulanger. Copland’s signature style is populist in nature and is influenced by American history and folklore as well as folk music, popular music, and jazz. Some of Copland’s most celebrated compositions deal with American themes (both musical and historical) — these include the ballets Billy the Kid, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring. Copland composed his Piano Sonata between 1939 and 1941, after Billy the Kid (1938) but before Rodeo (1942). The sonata shares many of the features associated with Copland’s popular ballet music and film scores, including an accessible harmonic language rooted in tonality, open sonorities built of perfect fourths, fifths, and octaves, and clear, expansive textures that utilize the full range of the piano.

The first movement of the sonata is a sonata-allegro form with a truncated recapitulation. This movement is slow, expansive, and lyrical with a pastoral feel. The first theme area is austere, angular, and dissonant, but this music eventually relents, and the consonant harmonies built of thirds in the second theme provide a moment of calm and tenderness. The second movement is a scherzo in rondo form featuring a jazz-infused, rollicking main theme that alternates between 5/8 and 7/8.

The third movement ties the sonata together because it builds on material from the previous two movements: the opening consists of chorale-like chords (in a descending pattern reminiscent of the first movement) that introduce solo statements of the lyrical theme from the second movement, first in a fragment, then in its full form. This is followed by an expansive, meditative section that seems to grow naturally out of the opening. The climax of the third movement (and the sonata) is the recurrence of the opening theme from the first movement. The ending is based on this material and ties the whole sonata together by serving as a second recapitulation to the first movement.

— Daniel Linder