Pinto: Sonatas for Piano and Violin

Bachara, Robert, Toporowski, Marek

96156

First recording of the complete works for violin and piano by George Friderick Pinto.

English composer George Frederick Pinto (1786-1806) was a child prodigy on violin and piano, playing his first violin concerto at the age of 11. His untimely death at age 21 prompted his teacher and mentor, the famous impresario Salomon to say: “If he had lived…England would have had the honour to produce a second Mozart”.

Pinto’s bold harmonic and melodic language and his experiments in form and keyboard writing are all well ahead of his time and suggest comparison with Schubert and Beethoven.

Though the title indicates the sonatas as having been written for piano ‘with violin accompaniment’, they nonetheless differ greatly from most works of this genre. The parts are of equal importance here, it would be impossible to omit the violin part. This is probably connected to the fact that Pinto was a virtuoso of both of these instruments. The style looks back at Mozart and Haydn yet also looks forward to even Brahms and Reger in its extraordinary use of chromatism.

Marek Toporowski is a harpsichordist, organist, pianist and conductor, one of Poland’s foremost performers in the Historical Performance movement. He is a scholar and a well known collector of historical instruments. Violinist Robert Bachara is one of Poland’s foremost exponents of the Historically Informed Performance Practice.

Also available by Marek Toporowski is the Complete Piano Music by Pinto, issued on Piano Classics.

CD x 1

Brilliant Classics

15.01.21

5028421961569