Beethoven : Piano Sonatas No. 4, 9, 10, 19, 20 / Gerhard Oppitz (Piano)

Hanssler Classic is proud to announce the latest volume in a major new Beethoven Sonata cycle, performed by Gerhard Oppitz. Throughout his distinguished career, Oppitz has established his deep understanding of Beethoven’s idiom and now brings a lifetime of experience to commit these works to disc. The current disc features the "Grande Sonate" in E flat Major, written in 1797, Beethoven’s first composition published on its own rather than as part of a collection of works. Next to the "Hammerklavier" Sonata op. 106, it is his most extensive, essay in the keyboard sonata. Kinetically impulsive, propelled by repeated chords in the left hand, the wide-ranging first movement opens up a sets the tone for the direction would take in the future. Gerhard Oppitz supplements the lengthy E flat Major Sonata with four smaller works; the two three-movement sonatas from op. 14, and the pair of charming two-movement sonatas (more precisely, "sonatinas") from op. 49.

Gerhard Oppitz was born in Frauenau (in the Bavarian Forest) in 1953. At the age of five, he began to play piano and debuted with a performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D Minor when he was eleven. Oppitz received his formal training in Stuttgart and Munich starting in 1966 with professors Paul Buck and Hugo Steurer, and later with Wilhelm Kempff, concentrating on the works of Beethoven. In 1977, he was awarded first prize at the Artur Rubinstein Competition in Israel. Oppitz’s main interest is the classical-romantic repertoire, although he has always devoted himself to music of the twentieth century. Oppitz is widely renown and respected for his programming major repertoire and cycles, such as Bach’s "Wohltemperiertes Klavier", Mozart’s eighteen sonatas, Beethoven’s 32 sonatas, all the solo works by Schubert and Brahms’ complete piano works. Since 1981, he has been teaching post-graduate students at the Academy of Music in Munich.

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