Pierre Boulez: Second Sonata for Piano

The New York Times preview - "TAKA KIGAWA at Spectrum (July 1, 7 p.m.). Concluding Spectrum’s Modern Piano (+) Festival, this adventurous pianist plays Boulez’s Piano Sonata No. 2, an immense act of destruction and creativity composed immediately after the Second World War. When Mr. Kigawa played the same work in 2014, as part of a concert of Boulez’s complete piano music, my colleague Zachary Woolfe heard a remarkable delicacy in a work that can sound dry and harsh." - David Allen, The New York Times

"I was very much impressed by the brilliant way he [Taka Kigawa] performed them [my solo piano works]. He was precise, and at the same time inventive." - Pierre Boulez

"In the Second Sonata (1947-48), which made its composer’s international reputation, Mr. Kigawa played with a surprisingly mellow tone, relishing the resonances. The big chords in the slow second movement were moist, not dry, and, later in the work, even crashing clusters of notes were juxtaposed with small moments of startling delicacy." - Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times

Spectrum's Modern Piano (+) Festival concludes with Taka Kigawa's acclaimed ability to interpret challenging, modernist piano repertoire – in this case Pierre Boulez's "notoriously difficult" Second Piano Sonata.

Reception follows.