London Music Digest, Stockhausen

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The Financial Times, 23 October 1972
Music Digest, by Dominic Gill
Jean Barraque’s Piano Sonata


The Financial Times, 23 October 1972
Music Digest, Dominic Gill
The London Music Digest is a new concert series at the Round House that will present regular programmes over the next few years… the evening recital, played by Roger Woodward, was given over to two performances of Jean Barraque’s piano sonata - that huge, forbidding and rigorously through-composed serial chef d’oeuvre…. When Woodward gave the first public performance of it in London last year, I found it a difficult, unapproachable work, worthy of much admiration and respect.  Last night it seemed no less difficult ... Woodward’s performances above all were very fine: the second especially, an astonishing tour de force in which all the elements melded…..



“Woodward played with astonishing calm… in Woodward I sensed the composer’s real intentions…  here is a player with real integrity.”  Christchurch Symphony, Rachmaninov Third Piano Concerto, 1995