WILHELM STENHAMMAR (1871-1927): Sonata in G Minor, Nights of Late Summer, Op. 33, 3 Fantasies, Op. 11, Sonata in A Flat, Op. 12.

Catalogue Number: 11K069
Label: Hyperion
Reference: CDA 67689
Format: CD
Price: $19.98
Description: All products of his early years (the Nights probably were written in the early 1900s and was the last solo piano work he composed), Stenhammar's piano works are shot through with influences from German Romanticism (Schumann in the G Minor sonata, Brahms in the Fantasies) and Grieg (the G minor's slow and scherzo movements), while the 1895 A flat sonata is modeled structurally and rhetorically on Beethoven's Op. 101 although the language is contemporary. The most personal work here is the set of Nights of Late Summer, whose haunted, melancholy and neurotic atmosphere seems to represent not only the end of the short Swedish summer but also the approaching winter of the mind. Martin Sturfält (piano).