CARL VINE (b.1954): Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-4.

Description: It is good to welcome a complete set of Vine's superb sonatas, which prove, if proof were needed, that there is nothing outmoded about writing cogently structured works for the 'conventional' piano; it just requires high levels of imagination and compositional technique. The First Sonata (1990) has been compared to Carter's early Sonata, and not without reason; both are muscular works in an idiom of extended tonality, with a kind of coiled energy even at repose, and ample exuberant virtuosity. Reflective opening and closing music enclose the intense rhythmic drive and impressive layers of sound in the first movement, while the second is a coruscating toccata with a Ravelian slow section at its core. The first movement of the Second Sonata is tumultuous, with insistent declamatory melodies - highly chromatic, and full of unexpected turns - over a thoroughly Romantic undulating stormy or rippling accompaniment. A gorgeous cascade of ornamented melody over an accompaniment in Debussyan parallel chords follows; then the perpetuum mobile second movement picks up the pace with jazzy syncopations and constant motoric propulsion bracketing a quiet pointillistic interlude. The Third Sonata is more introverted and brooding, with a sense of uneasy harmonic ambiguity extremely reminiscent of Busoni; the piece is a close cousin to the Toccata and the Prélude et Étude en arpèges. When more energetic music emerges in the second and fourth sections, it is again propelled by an exhilarating tide of syncopation and rhythmic drive. The 2019 Fourth Sonata is in three movements played continuously. The first, "Aphorisms" presents a series of subtly related episodes in a dramatically compressed structure of remarkable economy and clarity. The opening and closing sections of the second, "Reflection" have the calm atmosphere of water droplets falling into a deep pool, the tranquility briefly interrupted by a more urgent section with a sweeping arpeggiated accompaniment. Of the final movement, "Fury", the composer mentions its ‘relentless and unfocussed anger’, which accurately describes its trenchant vehemence and searing stream of rapid figuration punctuated by stabbing staccato chords. Xiaoya Liu (piano).