Album Notes

The New York Times has called Donald Isler "a most satisfying sonata player."

And the Classical Music Guide said of this disk "Donald Isler brings forward the traditions of great piano playing........a 'thinking' pianist........lovely tone.........a most satisfying recital."

In his program notes for this CD, pianist and scholar Jerome Lowenthal writes "It is easy to assert, as many have, that Beethoven's last works partake of a spirituality which differentiates them from his earlier masterpieces. What is not so easy to factor out are the musical techniques which create this difference in the artistic equation."

Featuring quirky fast movements, bizarrely juxtaposed against both moderate and very deep, soulful movements, the Bagatelles, Op. 126 are Beethoven's last major work for piano. The rest of this disk is devoted to Beethoven's last two works in the sonata form. Unique, creative highpoints both, it is hard to imagine the piano repertoire without them.

Pianist Donald Isler grew up in New York, graduated from the famous High School of Music and Art, and received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the Manhattan School of Music. His teachers included the distinguished pianists and pedagogues Sina Berlinski, Bruce Hungerford, Robert Goldsand, Constance Keene, Lilian Kallir, Zenon Fishbein and Eleanor Hancock.

He has served on the faculties of many schools, including the Brooklyn College Preparatory Center and the Diller-Quaile School, and on the jury of the Juilliard School Pre-College Concerto Competition.