Moritz Moszkowski: Complete Music for Solo Piano, Volume Two

Although Moritz Moszkowski (1854–1925) wrote a considerable quantity of piano music, only a single piece, ‘Étincelles’, made it into the repertoire, not least because Horowitz enjoyed playing it. The early works on this second instalment in Ian Hobson’s survey of Moszkowski’s complete music for solo piano reveal a debt to Mendelssohn and Schumann, but the effortless craftsmanship heard here already justifies a later remark of Paderewski’s: ‘After Chopin, Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano, and his writing embraces the whole gamut of piano technique’. Most of the pieces in Opp. 15 and 18 are attractive salon miniatures, but the Three Piano Pieces in Dance Form, Op. 17, are extended Lisztian essays that showcase Moszkowski’s mastery of the keyboard and his command of form.

Ian Hobson, piano