Music researcher and writer Katy Hamilton chooses her favourite recording of Liszt's Sonata in B minor.
When Clara Schumann described Liszt's 1854 Piano Sonata in B minor as 'truly terrible' it reflected an influential school of 19th-century thought (Brahms fell asleep when he first heard it). But for Liszt himself it was his breakthrough piece which established him as a 'proper' composer, one for whom musically-driven formal organisation and inspired ingenuity were paramount, rather than a mere pianist whose music was generated by the need to demonstrate his transcendent technique.
Posterity has sided with Liszt, not Clara – and so have successive generations of performers, reflected in a recorded legacy that is a veritable Who's Who of the great pianists of the last century and our own.
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