Beethoven / Rachmaninoff Piano Sonatas

As the climax of his hugely successful 2018/19 season, in which he celebrated both his sixtieth birthday and the fortieth anniversary of the launch of his sensational career, legendary Croatian pianist Ivo Pogorelich releases an eagerly-anticipated new recording on Sony Classical. This will be his first new album since 1998.

The repertoire comprises two sonatas by Beethoven - No. 22, Opp. 54, and No. 24, Op. 78 - and a work written just over a hundred years later, Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Sonata Op. 36.

Pogorelich has chosen these works to explore the profound influence of Beethoven's revolutionary compositional techniques (which one writer calls 'specifically pianistic forms of musical thought') on a later generation of composers. His uniquely powerful interpretation casts a new light on the understanding of these fascinating, though undeservedly lesser-known, masterpieces.