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Samuil Feinberg (1890 - 1962) - Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 3 (1916 - 1917) I. Prelude [0:00] II. Marche funebre [4:24] III. Sonate. Allegro appassionato [10:08] Marc-André Hamelin, piano (2019) Samuil Feinberg's Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 3 is one of his longest and most substantial sonatas, consisting of three movements and typically lasting around 23 minutes. The work, written in 1916 to 1917, was not initially published, and its second and third movements were instead recycled in his Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 20. Thanks to efforts by Anatoly Alexandrov, the sonata was finally published in 1974. “The Third Sonata is a masterpiece, featuring an innovative three-movement formal structure of 'Prelude,' 'Funeral March' and the 'Sonata' itself. The 'Funeral March' is a titanic force of despondency comparable to Liszt's darker works and Scriabin's 'Funebre' movement from his First Sonata. Feinberg employs a variety of musical symbols, including a 'Death' motif (a stark and effective use of fifths) that later becomes the main thematic thread of the 'Sonata' movement, which is an unbelievable 13-minute 'Allegro appassionato' of stupefying virtuosity. The 'Sonata' has a dense texture and constant motion that truly requires a rare brand of virtuosity. The technical challenges can be heard; they are jaw-dropping. But if that wasn't enough of an obstacle for the pianist, there is the unrelenting cerebral complexity and emotional angst to interpret and convey. Christophe Sirodeau calls this 'Sonata' movement 'a veritable hurricane of destruction.'“ (source: Hexameron's Amazon review - ) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Some extra info: 1) In preparing the sonata for publication, Alexandrov made several revisions to the first and second movements. Hamelin does not play these revisions and instead plays the original version from Feinberg's manuscript, which Hamelin has uploaded to IMSLP. 2) The score to the first movement was engraved by me, so you can expect some errors. I primarily attempted to reproduce and preserve all of the notes, voicings, staff crossings, etc. from the manuscript, only making a few small changes. Unfortunately, many of the note stems are not very visible in the manuscript, so a lot of that was up to my interpretation, which is quite likely wrong in several cases. My engraving is uploaded here: 3) For the second movement, I simply edited the already-cropped images I had from my old video because Alexandrov made relatively few changes to this movement (and because I was lazy). I did not fix every inconsistency between the manuscript and the published version, like the altered key changes, but I should have corrected all of the pitches that Alexandrov altered. One thing to note is that Feinberg did not write dynamics or articulations, apart from a few accents, in the first two movements, so almost all markings seen in the second movement were added by Alexandrov. 4) My previous video featuring Sirodeau's recording of the second movement has been unlisted, but it can still be found on my Feinberg playlists.
