The latest volume in a critically acclaimed series, presenting modern recordings of Dussek’s exhilaratingly diverse cycle of piano sonatas on instruments of his own time.

This enterprising series has reached the trio of ‘Grand Sonatas’ op.35, probably first published in 1798, when Dussek dedicated them to Gabrielle Pleyel (wife of the piano manufacturer Ignaz Pleyel) and Muzio Clementi, the composer, publisher and piano manufacturer who developed new, more powerful-sounding and reliable piano actions. Dussek, like Beethoven, seized on such technological innovation and produced music of a new turbulence such as the C minor Sonata, op.35 no.3. The sonata’s opening Allegro bursts with a vitality and violence which becomes all the more vivid when played on a piano from Dussek’s time, straining to contain the music’s expressive reach, as it is here.

The instrument used on this album is a 1798 fortepiano from the firm of Longman-Clementi. Accordingly the touch and sound corresponds more closely than any other piano previously used on recordings of this repertoire. Dussek lived in London during the 1790s, and worked closely with the manufacturer John Broadwood to extend the range of keyboard instruments. The English fortepiano lent itself naturally to the harmonic fullness of Dussek's preferred textures, and in reverse, the instrument's characteristic sound and touch inspired and shaped the development of Dussek's compositional style.