Concert pianist Mei-Ting Sun offers several classical works on his web site.

The first two works are by Bela Bartok. Etudes, Op. 18 is so difficult to play that the composer himself stated “I cannot play the three Etudes. I haven’t played them–ever or anywhere–since 1918.” The piano studies were written to teach students how to expand and contract their hand movements. The changing rhythms in the last piece also makes it challenging. The Piano Sonata of 1926 is Bartok’s only published piece of this type and has all the trademarks of the composer; blinding fast phrases, polyphonics, pounding rhythms. It was quite shocking in his time and can still be jarring to our “modern” ears. The length of the two works are 8 minutes and 12 minutes respectively, substantially shorter than most featured works on this site. However I love these pieces so much I’ll make an exception to the rule this time.

At over 30 minutes, Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana more than makes up for the brevity of the first two. It consists of 8 parts, “fanasies”, for piano. Schumann writes,” ‘The title is understandable only to Germans. Kreisler is a figure created by E.T.A. Hoffmann — an eccentric, wild and clever Kapellmeister.” The piece results in a wide ranges of moods in Schubert’s attempt to capture the emotions of Kreisler. The music is both eccentric and passionate. AMG states “like most of Schumann’s piano music from the late 1830s, it is really about Schumann’s love for Clara Wieck.”

The above music is available in 128kbps MP3s from the link below. While you’re there, you might as well go wild and pick up the two brief but delightful Sonatas K. 420 and 421 in C major by Domenico Scarlatti.

No longer available