Piano Sonata No. 1, Sonatine and Miroirs

Great music, strong performances, beautifully recorded,– this is one that should be in any piano lover’s collection.

... Great music, strong performances, beautifully recorded,– this is one that should be in any piano lover’s collection.

“...simply sensational...This is a definitive recording [ref Rachmaninov Piano Sonata No 1]...every note of the 40-minute piece is coloured and paced with anticipation and a keen eye for the structure of the whole narration. In this respect, Minnaar has few rivals...Minnaar has the makings of a great artist: a natural technique, musical intelligence, personality, modesty and a talent for hard work (so valued by Rachmaninov). In all, a most thrilling debut and an absolute must hear.”

The sensational young Dutch pianist Hannes Minnaar, international prize-winner and recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust fellowship but not yet known here, displays his extravagant gifts in this debut disc of Rachmaninov's weighty Sonata No 1 and Ravel's Sonatine and Miroirs. Minnaar's virtuosity needs no comment: we expect that. His musical intelligence, sense of line and structure, delicacy, subtlety of texture and discipline set him apart. His Ravel is muscular and sparkling, his Rachmaninov glowing, meticulous and fervent. He is also a chamber musician, having played with the likes of Mischa Maisky and Janine Jansen as well as his own recently established Van Baerle Trio. Watch out for him.
“This is indeed an astonishing debut... Minnaar is faultless in pacing the many climaxes of the outer movements to attain coherence of the whole, and the strongest sense of direction [ref Rachmaninov Piano Sonata No 1]...This is a disc which I will not be putting away for a long time yet.”

His debut album with Ravel and Rachmaninov (on Etcetera Records) found high acclaim in the national and international music press. “Gramophone” magazine selected him as the “One to watch” artist in the December 2011 edition. The album was awarded a Dutch Edison Prize for “The Debut” in 2012. Spring 2012, his Van Baerle Trio released an album with Saint-Saëns, Loevendie and Ravel. This album was praised in the national and international press as well, and received the Edison Debut Prize in 2013.

In 2010 leverde pianist Hannes Minnaar een unieke prestatie door derde te worden tijdens de prestigieuze Koningin Elizabeth-wedstrijd in België, de hoogste onderscheiding ooit door een Nederlandse pianist behaald.“Een meester in glasheldere articulatie en fijnzinnigheid”, noemde de Belgische Standaard hem. Het zijn kwaliteiten die uitstekend van pas komen op dit debuutalbum. De ‘Eerste Sonate’ van Rachmaninov wordt zelden opgenomen en vormt met zijn weerbarstig karakter en technische moeilijkheidsgraad een grote uitdaging. Een prachtig contrast met het genuanceerde en kleurrijke palet van de ‘Miroirs’ van Ravel.

Only a few works for piano, notably the Menuet
antique (1895), his first composition for piano,
the Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899) and
Jeux d’eau (1902) preceded Miroirs (1905), the
suite in five movements composed when Ravel
was thirty years old, although he was also working
on his unsurpassed Sonatine at the same
time. Unlike Rachmaninoff, Ravel did not prepare
himself for his larger and more complete piano
works with a series of miniatures or Moments
musicaux; Ravel’s music was fully formed from
the beginning, although he had nonetheless
made use of forms used by earlier composers in
the Menuet antique and the Sonatine as well as
in the Liszt-inspired Jeux d’eau. He shook himself
free of classicism in Miroirs, seeing in them the
possibility of developing a style of composition
for piano from a primarily harmonic viewpoint.
He said that he had composed Miroirs in order
to break away from his Jeux d’eau, writing later
in 1928 that “Miroirs was a collection of piano
pieces that marked such a pronounced change in
my harmonic development that it bewildered all
of the musicians who until then ha