Recital - Ronald Farren-price

The Age

Saturday December 16, 2006

CLIVE O'CONNELL

WHO Ronald Farren-Price

WHEN Tonight at 8:15pm

WHERE BMW Edge, Federation Square, city

TICKETS $50/$45, 9348 0863

This will be the last year noted Australian pianist Ronald Farren-Price will perform at the Impresaria recital series. In what has become part of the Melbourne musical calendar, the recital will celebrate Beethoven's 236th birthday on what promises to be an emotionally charged evening. The 76-year-old Farren-Price will perform two Beethoven sonatas that sit at either end of the composer's first compositional period. The F minor Sonata No. 1 displays a striking originality that would have been apparent if not welcome to its dedicatee, Josef Haydn. More famous in the Beethoven canon is the Sonata No. 14, the Moonlight, with its nocturnal opening movement known to every pianist and the furious, aggressive finale that amateurs cheerfully avoid. By way of giving these formidable works a context, Farren-Price has also programmed two Haydn works that demonstrate the parity of mind between the renowned classical master and his heir, for a time, Haydn's apparently abrasive student. The F minor Variations come from 1793, three years before Beethoven's first sonata was finally completed. Haydn's C minor Sonata, his only one in that powerful key, was composed in 1771 and anticipates the tension and powerful striving with which Beethoven exploded into the European music world during the last years of Haydn's life. -- CLIVE O'CONNELL

© 2006 The Age

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