The Piano Sonatas of Carl Loewe

The Author: Pianist John Salmon has performed widely throughout the U.S. and Europe. Since 1989, he has been on the faculty of the School of Music of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he directs the annual Focus on Piano Literature symposium. His awards include a fellowship from The Beethoven Foundation and the Gina Bachauer Memorial Award from The Juilliard School.

"Dr. Salmon's study is immensely important, for awareness of Loewe's sonatas affects the entire picture of the genre in the nineteenth century. The examination of the music is thorough and insightful, and Salmon's observations reveal the fascinating and often highly creative ideas of the composer, who deserves to be regarded as a progressive and imaginative transitional figure in the German Romantic movement between the generations of Beethoven and Schumann. In addition to the author's perceptive analysis of the music, the remarkable breadth of knowledge and understanding he brings to his argument enable him to place it convincingly in the context of both historical and aesthetic developments." (Douglass Seuton, Professor of Musicology, The Florida State University)
"John Salmon has produced a well-researched, highly readable account of Loewe, composer chiefly of ballad songs and some piano music. Although now nearly forgotten, Loewe was an active cog during the heart of Germany's musical Romanticism." (William S. Newman, Professor Emeritus, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
"'The Piano Sonatas of Carl Loewe' is a fascinating volume, where Dr. Salmon has put on display a rich keyboard literature. Not to know these works would be a shame, as they constitute an interesting world of stylistic traits of the Classic and Romantic sonata-idea - a work of solid scholarship as well as excellent writing." (David Dubal, Professor of Piano Literature, The Juilliard School)