SOMM Recordings continues its long collaboration with pianist Leon McCawley, named “one of today’s most impeccably musical pianists” by International Piano. His past recordings for SOMM include much-admired releases of piano music by Chopin; Barber (Critics’ Choice in Gramophone); Brahms (Classic FM CD of the Week); Schumann; Rachmaninov Complete Preludes; Haydn Sonatas and Variations (awarded a Diapason d’Or); Schubert; three further volumes of Haydn Sonatas; and the 2024 release Natural Connection, about which Gramophone wrote “This scintillatingly varied recital combines sensuous virtuosity, compelling charm and musical probity. Highly recommended.”

In this recital McCawley presents some of his old favourites by composer-pianists Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin, and Franck. While the recital focusses on 19th-century composers, the programme begins and ends with a nod to J.S. Bach. Amongst Bach’s works that Franz Liszt revered were his six organ preludes and fugues. In transcribing them for piano, Liszt became a major influence on later arrangers. Heard here is the first in the set, Prelude and Fugue in A minor.

The Piano Sonata in C major, op.53, the “Waldstein”, by Beethoven – dedicated to his friend and patron, Count Ferdinand von Waldstein – comes from his aptly named “Heroic” period. It was written in 1804, two years after the watershed moment of his Heiligenstadt Testament, when he had contemplated suicide because of his encroaching deafness, but instead made the profound choice to channel his despair into a bold new musical style. The “Waldstein” Sonata is a vivid expression of this newfound path and of Beethoven’s ability to transcend personal adversity to create ground-breaking works of deep complexity.

One of the renowned “out-takes” of musical history is Beethoven’s Andante favori. He originally intended it as the slow movement of his “Waldstein” Sonata, but he substituted it with a shorter adagio labelled “Introduzione”. He had formed an attachment to the piece, though, and he published it as a stand-alone work, including it frequently in subsequent recitals. In an engaging piece of programming, Leon McCawley pairs it here with the “Waldstein” Sonata.

Two introspective works by Chopin follow. The Berceuse is a series of continuous contemplations on a simple, nocturne-like theme. In the Barcarolle, Chopin’s affinity to the bel canto operatic style is strongly apparent, especially in the beautiful, florid figurations in the right hand.

Leon McCawley closes his beautifully curated recital with the Prelude, Chorale and Fugue for solo piano by César Franck. Franck was trained as a pianist, but he served as an organist at Paris’s Sainte-Clotilde Church from 1858 until his death in 1890. Inspired by the rich, orchestral sound of the Cavaillé-Coll organ there, he developed a grandiose, improvisatory style of keyboard writing that was harmonically influenced by Bach but thoroughly romantic in expression.