Harold Shapero: Piano Music
Harold Shapero (1920-2013) reacted against the dominance of modernism in American musical life in the mid-twentieth-century by using a Neoclassical language with its roots in Beethoven and Schubert, initially animated by Stravinsky. These three early piano works — two of them receiving their first-ever recordings — reveal Shapero's superb craftsmanship and his ready wit, in music which embraces the past instead of rejecting it.
Sally Pinkas, piano
Evan Hirsch and Sally Pinkas, piano duo
Listen To This Recording:
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Sonata in F minor (1948)
- I Allegro moderato
- II Arioso
- III Allegro assai
- Variations in C minor (1947)
- I Very Slowly – Moderately Fast
- II Slowly
- III Fast
Four-Hand Sonata (1941)
Michael Round :
“… Both here [Sonata in F minor] and in the C minor Variations of 1947 (both first recordings), the idiom is rugged, the scale substantial and the initial effect powerful. Sally Pinkas’s admirable and close-miked performances are suitably robust. She is joined by Evan Hirsch for the Four-Hand Sonata, which recalls Copland and Poulenc.” International Piano