Catalogue # CHAN10689 The multi-award-winning pianist\nJean-Efflam Bavouzet continues his great survey of Haydn’s piano\nsonatas. This is Volume 3 in a series, of which The Times wrote:\n‘Who is the best composer for refreshing the spirit and making you\nlaugh? Haydn, of course, especially when in the hands of a pianist\nlike Bavouzet, another master of delight.’

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In the words of Bavouzet himself: ‘Each volume of this\nambitious, extended project will arrive over the years like a\npostcard, dispatched during my travels with scant respect for\nchronological considerations, but undertaken with the greatest\npassion for trying to convey as vividly as possible to\ntwenty-first-century ears the boundless treasures of this sublime\nmusic.’ He also notes: ‘We often forget how little information\nHaydn left us in the scores of his keyboard works: few indications\nof nuance or of phrasing, and the briefest guides to tempo. This\ntask is never anything other than absolutely fascinating, but for\nthe performer it is also testing, and even risky. He must, even\nmore than usual, create his own world, his own logic, left only to\nhope that, in the absence of tangible evidence, he will not\ndistance himself too far from the composer’s intentions, which\nremain forever unknowable.’

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For the recording of this series, Bavouzet brought in a\nspecially selected Yamaha piano which he feels gives the sort of\ntonal quality he is looking for, and once again this shows in a\nprogramme, which here presents the large-scale Sonata in C minor\nalongside sonatas of a lighter and sunnier character.

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Haydn:
\nPiano Sonata No. 16 in D major, Hob.XVI:14
\nPiano Sonata No. 29 in E flat major, Hob.XVI:45
\nPiano Sonata No. 33 in C minor, Hob.XVI:20
\nPiano Sonata No. 42 in G major, Hob.XVI:27

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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (piano)

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