Piano Music 1

The English composer-pianist Freda Swain (1902-85) left behind a huge legacy of music that was largely unknown even during her own lifetime. Her compositions - hundreds of them, in a series of large boxes - found their way to the Swiss pianist Timon Altwegg, who begins his survey of her piano music with these three mighty sonatas. They are astonishing discoveries: big-boned, virtuosic pieces, full of wild energy, crossing from late Romanticism to a more modern idiom - from Rachmaninov to Bartók, so to speak - and with Bax's fondness for Celtic seascapes and a hint of Debussyan Impressionism.