Piano Sonata No. 4

Andrew Violette, piano

If you’re as insane a completist as I am, when Innova issued Andrew Violette’s nearly three-hour Piano Sonata No. 7—which fills three CDs alongside his almost miniature by comparison (15 minutes) Piano Sonata No. 1—you might have found yourself wondering what happened to sonatas 2 through 6? Well, the answer can be found on this equally hefty three-CD set which collects all of them. Sonatas Nos. 3 and 5, which are both over an hour each, take up two of the three discs, while the remaining disc collects 2, 4 and 6. Where to begin? A snippet of any of these behemoths barely lets you appreciate this music’s sprawl between over the top romanticism, thorny modernism, and minimalism via maximalism, but a passage alternating pounding clusters, eerie silences, and an almost late Liszt melodic flourish near the end of the 20-minute long seventh movement of Piano Sonata No. 4 from 1982 might give you some idea of what you’re in for. I know I’m in for multiple doses of the whole seven-hour extravaganza, now that it’s all available!

—FJO