The contemporaries of Johann Nepomuk Hummel held him in high regard both as a pianist and composer. He influenced the piano compositions of many others, including Beethoven, Schubert, and Chopin. In the year of this recording by Madoka Inui of his piano fantasies, he is enjoying a mini-revival, with a number of new recordings of his music on several labels. There are many moments when other composers come to mind in these fantasies, most obviously Beethoven and Schubert. Beethoven wrote his "Hammerklavier" Sonata in ...
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The contemporaries of Johann Nepomuk Hummel held him in high regard both as a pianist and composer. He influenced the piano compositions of many others, including Beethoven, Schubert, and Chopin. In the year of this recording by Madoka Inui of his piano fantasies, he is enjoying a mini-revival, with a number of new recordings of his music on several labels. There are many moments when other composers come to mind in these fantasies, most obviously Beethoven and Schubert. Beethoven wrote his "Hammerklavier" Sonata in response to Hummel's Fantasie, Op. 18. The Hummel does have those large, unexpected contrasts of dynamics, textures, and articulation that Beethoven loved to use. Listeners have called certain passages in its opening Lento introduction "twentieth century sounding" because of their almost atonal quality. Its Larghetto movement has long, beautiful melodies with florid decoration, low trills as in Schubert's Impromptu, Op. 90, No. 3, and pulsing chords as in Schubert's Impromptu, Op. 90, No....
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