Recent Researches in the Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

The English composer George Frederick Pinto (1785–1806) was, according to his contemporaries, one of the most precocious young stars of the London Pianoforte School, and his death at age 20 extinguished a promising career. Pinto’s surviving music includes works for solo keyboard, songs, and these three sonatas for keyboard and violin, which he composed in the last year of his life. Coming from the “accompanied keyboard sonata” tradition of Haydn, J. C. Bach, Clementi, and Hummel, the sonatas give a major role to the keyboard, while elevating the importance of the violin to a level approaching that of the true duo sonata. The sonatas combine the London Pianoforte School’s virtuosity with almost Schubertian lyricism.

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