Markus Becker has won the ECHO-Klassik award three times and the German Critics Choice Award for his CD recordings.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Haydn's music is deeply human, reflecting life's beauties, depths, hopes, losses, dramas, and joys, all imbued with passion and irony.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Joseph Haydn's piano sonatas reveal an endlessly multifaceted life, becoming more concrete and mysterious the longer one engages with them.
Performer Biography
Markus Becker, the pianist on this album, is a professor at the Hanover Academy of Music, Theatre and Media and is also known as a virtuoso jazz improviser.
Critical Reception
Haydn was long seen as merely a forerunner of Viennese Classicism, with his sonatas often reduced to being clever teaching material, overlooking their nuanced depth.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Haydn's music is characterized by unexpected turns, sudden ideas, humorous associations, and surprising asymmetries, alongside long melodic arcs that make the piano sing.
Compositional Technique
Haydn's Baroque 'footing' is evident in latent polyphony and a tendency towards musical rhetoric, alongside a wide range of articulation from deep legato to humorously exaggerated staccato.
