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Smyth Complete Piano Works
Ethel Smyth
Piano
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Smyth Complete Piano Works
Juilliard Store
Pickup available, usually ready in 4 hours
144 West 66th Street
New York NY 10023
United States
It is quite amazing that the piano works of the English composer Ethel Smyth had remained unpublished until 2003. All of them were written during her Leipzig study years after 1877, a period that Ethel Smyth herself described as the happiest time of her life. In Leipzig, she met such musical giants as Brahms, Clara Schumann, Dvořák, Grieg and Tchaikovsky. It should come as no surprise that these encounters left stylistic traces in Ethel Smyth's piano oeuvre.
Smyth wrote the three piano sonatas in 1877, yet they are stylistically diverse: Smyth raced through a kind of musico-historical evolution. Her point of departure was Haydn and Mozart, who clearly inspired her sonata in C major. It was followed by the impassionate sonata in C sharp minor, which was inspired by the actress Marie Geistinger. The two-movement fragment in D major, reflecting Ethel Smyth’s admiration for Brahms, concludes the sonatas.
Most of the other piano pieces borrow their atmosphere and titles from Baroque models (dance movements, genre pieces) and are technically undemanding. They have been arranged in this edition in order of progressive difficulty.
Smyth wrote the three piano sonatas in 1877, yet they are stylistically diverse: Smyth raced through a kind of musico-historical evolution. Her point of departure was Haydn and Mozart, who clearly inspired her sonata in C major. It was followed by the impassionate sonata in C sharp minor, which was inspired by the actress Marie Geistinger. The two-movement fragment in D major, reflecting Ethel Smyth’s admiration for Brahms, concludes the sonatas.
Most of the other piano pieces borrow their atmosphere and titles from Baroque models (dance movements, genre pieces) and are technically undemanding. They have been arranged in this edition in order of progressive difficulty.