Producer: John Noel RobertsRecording Engineer: Fred HortonDigital Editor: Fred HortonRecorded: Op. 5 and Op. 35 [June 22-23, 2006], Op. 2 and Op. 79 [June 18-19, 2007], Op. 1 [May 13-14, 2008], in Neva Langley Fickling Hall of the McCorkle Music Building, Mercer University, Macon, GeorgiaPiano Technician: Charles CookGraphic Design: Matthew SmithProject Manager: Tommy Joe Anderson

This recording was made possible by a grant from Mercer University.

This project is dedicated to the memory of Joan May Thompson Roberts.

ACA Digital Recording, P.O. Box 450727, Atlanta, GA 31145© 2009 ACA Digital Recording, Inc.P

John Noel Roberts is a pianist whose artistry and pedagogy has gained widespread appreciation. He has demonstrated his interpretive skills, technical ability and his wide-ranging repertoire in solo and concerto performances in Great Britain, Australia, India, Canada, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Italy, Japan and Malaysia.

Roberts has appeared as guest soloist with such ensembles as the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Lima Symphony Orchestra, Greenville Symphony Orchestra, Penang Festival Orchestra, Western Australian Symphony Orchestra, Charlotte Philharmonia Orchestra and the Macon Symphony Orchestra. In recent years, he has participated in A Winter Musical Feast, a chamber music festival in Perth, Australia; performed in Hibiki Hall in Kitakyshu, Japan; participated in The Friends of Alec Wilder annual concert in New York City; and presented recitals at L’auditorium Nuovo Montemezzi, Verona and the Teatro Olympico, Vicenze in Italy.

A native of Texas, Roberts received early piano studies with Sister Mary Elaine Gentemann, C.D.P. at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio. He later graduated from the Eastman School of Music, where he was a student of Eugene List and Barry Snyder and was awarded the Performer’s Certificate in Piano. He continued his graduate studies at the Yale University School of Music, where he received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree. At Yale, he studied with Claude Frank and Ward Davenny and was a winner in the Sprague Hall Competition.

Formerly Artist in Residence and Head of Music at the Western Australian Conservatorium of Music of the Edith Cowan University, John Noel Roberts has also served on the faculties at Furman University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Roberts is currently the Callaway Professor of Music at Mercer University.

John Noel Roberts can also be heard on the ACA Digital Recording releases CM20089 Frédéric Chopin: Poetry at the Piano and EM30009 Quest: Piano Works by Sister Mary Elaine Gentemann.

Nowadays it’s hard to imagine Johannes Brahms as a controversial figure, but in his day, the last half of the nineteenth century, his musical style drew loud outcries from critics, fellow composers and performers alike for one basic reason. Brahms saw himself, and was seen by others, as a champion for the great “classic” musical tradition most clearly defined by the works of Beethoven. Call it, loosely, an abstract, more form-driven music as opposed to the self-consciously dramatic or programmatic compositions of Berlioz or Liszt or Wagner. Brahms’ adherence to this relatively conservative mode provoked virulent attacks on his “old-fashioned” music by representatives of the music of the future, advocates of what was dubbed the New German School. That stodgy, bourgeois image of plump Papa Brahms seated at an upright piano, puffing contentedly on a cigar, still remains alive in many minds, and it’s at least partly a slander by his enemies.

The composer was never simply a plump Papa, especially not at the dynamic opening of his professional career. Then it was a golden-haired, angelic and beardless Brahms, barely twenty, who made his dramatic appearance on the musical scene. His sudden fame had its beginnings with piano sonatas, regarded by some as passé exercises in old-fashioned formalism. His sonatas, provoking a stupendous, influential endorsement from Robert Schumann, propelled the boyish composer into the very heart of the contemporary musical milieu.

Brahms, in some sense, saw himself as next in line to assume the mantle of Beethoven, although not necessarily on the same scale. Beethoven’s piano sonatas, all thirty-two of them, assume a central place in the canon. The younger composer’s three sonatas, written in the two years before and just after his twentieth birthday, make an unmistakable statement that the older tradition is alive and well in the fingers and imagination of a vital new protagonist.

Scholars disagree about Brahms’ earliest work at the piano. Some claim, assisted by hints from the older Brahms, that in his early teens, he played dance music in Hamburg’s waterfront brothels to help support his impoverished family. More recent scholarship disputes this as lurid speculation. There’s no disputing, though, that his youthful skill at the keyboard commanded recognition beginning with his first public concert, aged fourteen, in 1847. Five years later, after an interim occupied by teaching, study and composition, he and the violinist Eduard Reményi embarked upon a brief, well-received tour of concerts in small German venues.

A somewhat disagreeable climax of the tour found Brahms visiting Liszt at Weimar in June, 1853, where the world-renowned older virtuoso played through Brahms’ C Major Sonata, apparently finding it impressive. Liszt then played his own flamboyant, newly-composed B Minor Sonata. Reményi reported that Brahms fell asleep during the Master’s performance. True or not, the fact remains that Liszt never conducted or performed in public a work by Brahms, and the two men remained at professional odds all their lives.

A few weeks later, though, on September 30, a far more momentous meeting was to take place. Brahms called upon Robert and Clara Schumann at their home in Düsseldorf. Though at first nervous and insecure, he played his sonatas and other pieces for the famous couple. They were thunderstruck by the achievement of this child-like youth with an unbroken voice. In her journals Clara wrote, “Here again is one who comes as if sent from God!“ Robert immediately set out to publicize the arrival of a blazing new talent.

The notorious upshot of this meeting appeared in the October 28, 1853 issue of the powerful Neue Zeitschrift für Musik with an article by Schumann entitled Neue Bahnen, “New Paths,” putting Brahms squarely and controversially in the middle of the musical map. Citing him as one “springing forth like Minerva fully armed from the head of Jove,” whose works “reveal to us wondrous regions,” Schumann declared his sonatas to be “veiled symphonies.” The over-the-top extravagance and rather bewildering imagery of the article may tell us more about Schumann than about Brahms, but the younger composer’s path had been laid out for him.

The C Major Sonata, Op. 1, is actually the second of the three piano sonatas Brahms composed in 1852/53, and in it, Brahms shows himself to be a true Beethovener right from its opening theme, a gesture toward Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. The vigor and energy of the older composer permeate a work whose shape pays homage to the formal sonata tradition while making a distinctive personal statement. Its lyrical second movement offers variations on an old German song:

The moon steals out / Blue, blue little flower, Through silver clouds he takes his course / Blue, blue little flower. Roses in the valley, maiden in her chamber, O most beautiful Rosa!

Composed earlier than the C Major Sonata, the F# Minor Sonata, Op. 2, makes a more freely expressive, almost rhapsodic impression. The nervous, unsettled opening Allegro gives way to an Andante con espressione that is exactly that: an emotionally probing exercise in deep introspection. As in all three of the sonatas, this slow movement has a basis in song: here, an old Minnesinger lyric, “Mir ist leide” (“It saddens me that winter has bared the wood and heath”). Following a Mendelssohnian Scherzo, the Finale concludes the work in high Romantic fashion, virtuosic and often capricious despite its serious modalities.

The third and last piano sonata that Brahms was to compose can be seen as an extended commentary and reflection upon the first two sonatas. The F Minor Sonata, Op. 5, an immense, five-movement work, contains significant elements of Op. 1, its rhapsodic quality for example, and Op. 2, its caprice and virtuosity. A massive, stormy opening movement leads into a pensive, deeply lyrical Andante reminiscent of Beethoven’s slow movements. Brahms takes his cue from a Sternau lyric:

The twilight falls, the moonlight gleams, Two hearts in love unite, Embraced in rapture.

The Scherzo that follows, a full-blown, picaresque showpiece, moves into an Intermezzo subtitled “Reminiscence,” a meditation upon the previous Andante, only now more marked and less lyrical. A kaleidoscopic Finale offers a bit of rondo form plus mysterious questionings, a hint at a chorale-prelude and a coda that brings the sonata to an astonishing, whirlwind conclusion.

The variation form intrigued Brahms, as it did Beethoven. The New Grove lists a remarkable thirty-one sets of variations by the earlier composer, only nine sets by Brahms. Among the best-loved is the Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 35. Composed ten years after the sonatas, this showpiece uses the Caprice No. 24 for its series of brilliant, exhilarating turns upon a familiar theme.

Several years later, in 1879, Brahms composed a pair of works, each designated as a rhapsody with that form’s expressiveness and freedom of movement, with plenty of scope for the performer to demonstrate an impressive technique. The B Minor Rhapsody, Op.79, makes a dynamic impression, lyrical and majestic by turns, never predictable, and always offering new delights of pianism at its most accomplished. -Notes by John Stege

Nowadays it’s hard to imagine Johannes Brahms as a controversial figure, but in his day, the last half of the nineteenth century, his musical style drew loud outcries from critics, fellow composers and performers alike for one basic reason. Brahms saw himself, and was seen by others, as a champion for the great “classic” musical tradition most clearly defined by the works of Beethoven. Call it, loosely, an abstract, more form-driven music as opposed to the self-consciously dramatic or programmatic compositions of Berlioz or Liszt or Wagner. Brahms’ adherence to this relatively conservative mode provoked virulent attacks on his “old-fashioned” music by representatives of the music of the future, advocates of what was dubbed the New German School. That stodgy, bourgeois image of plump Papa Brahms seated at an upright piano, puffing contentedly on a cigar, still remains alive in many minds, and it’s at least partly a slander by his enemies.

The composer was never simply a plump Papa, especially not at the dynamic opening of his professional career. Then it was a golden-haired, angelic and beardless Brahms, barely twenty, who made his dramatic appearance on the musical scene. His sudden fame had its beginnings with piano sonatas, regarded by some as passé exercises in old-fashioned formalism. His sonatas, provoking a stupendous, influential endorsement from Robert Schumann, propelled the boyish composer into the very heart of the contemporary musical milieu.

Brahms, in some sense, saw himself as next in line to assume the mantle of Beethoven, although not necessarily on the same scale. Beethoven’s piano sonatas, all thirty-two of them, assume a central place in the canon. The younger composer’s three sonatas, written in the two years before and just after his twentieth birthday, make an unmistakable statement that the older tradition is alive and well in the fingers and imagination of a vital new protagonist.

Scholars disagree about Brahms’ earliest work at the piano. Some claim, assisted by hints from the older Brahms, that in his early teens, he played dance music in Hamburg’s waterfront brothels to help support his impoverished family. More recent scholarship disputes this as lurid speculation. There’s no disputing, though, that his youthful skill at the keyboard commanded recognition beginning with his first public concert, aged fourteen, in 1847. Five years later, after an interim occupied by teaching, study and composition, he and the violinist Eduard Reményi embarked upon a brief, well-received tour of concerts in small German venues.

A somewhat disagreeable climax of the tour found Brahms visiting Liszt at Weimar in June, 1853, where the world-renowned older virtuoso played through Brahms’ C Major Sonata, apparently finding it impressive. Liszt then played his own flamboyant, newly-composed B Minor Sonata. Reményi reported that Brahms fell asleep during the Master’s performance. True or not, the fact remains that Liszt never conducted or performed in public a work by Brahms, and the two men remained at professional odds all their lives.

A few weeks later, though, on September 30, a far more momentous meeting was to take place. Brahms called upon Robert and Clara Schumann at their home in Düsseldorf. Though at first nervous and insecure, he played his sonatas and other pieces for the famous couple. They were thunderstruck by the achievement of this child-like youth with an unbroken voice. In her journals Clara wrote, “Here again is one who comes as if sent from God!“ Robert immediately set out to publicize the arrival of a blazing new talent.

The notorious upshot of this meeting appeared in the October 28, 1853 issue of the powerful Neue Zeitschrift für Musik with an article by Schumann entitled Neue Bahnen, “New Paths,” putting Brahms squarely and controversially in the middle of the musical map. Citing him as one “springing forth like Minerva fully armed from the head of Jove,” whose works “reveal to us wondrous regions,” Schumann declared his sonatas to be “veiled symphonies.” The over-the-top extravagance and rather bewildering imagery of the article may tell us more about Schumann than about Brahms, but the younger composer’s path had been laid out for him.

The C Major Sonata, Op. 1, is actually the second of the three piano sonatas Brahms composed in 1852/53, and in it, Brahms shows himself to be a true Beethovener right from its opening theme, a gesture toward Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. The vigor and energy of the older composer permeate a work whose shape pays homage to the formal sonata tradition while making a distinctive personal statement. Its lyrical second movement offers variations on an old German song:

The moon steals out / Blue, blue little flower, Through silver clouds he takes his course / Blue, blue little flower. Roses in the valley, maiden in her chamber, O most beautiful Rosa!

Composed earlier than the C Major Sonata, the F# Minor Sonata, Op. 2, makes a more freely expressive, almost rhapsodic impression. The nervous, unsettled opening Allegro gives way to an Andante con espressione that is exactly that: an emotionally probing exercise in deep introspection. As in all three of the sonatas, this slow movement has a basis in song: here, an old Minnesinger lyric, “Mir ist leide” (“It saddens me that winter has bared the wood and heath”). Following a Mendelssohnian Scherzo, the Finale concludes the work in high Romantic fashion, virtuosic and often capricious despite its serious modalities.

The third and last piano sonata that Brahms was to compose can be seen as an extended commentary and reflection upon the first two sonatas. The F Minor Sonata, Op. 5, an immense, five-movement work, contains significant elements of Op. 1, its rhapsodic quality for example, and Op. 2, its caprice and virtuosity. A massive, stormy opening movement leads into a pensive, deeply lyrical Andante reminiscent of Beethoven’s slow movements. Brahms takes his cue from a Sternau lyric:

The twilight falls, the moonlight gleams, Two hearts in love unite, Embraced in rapture.

The Scherzo that follows, a full-blown, picaresque showpiece, moves into an Intermezzo subtitled “Reminiscence,” a meditation upon the previous Andante, only now more marked and less lyrical. A kaleidoscopic Finale offers a bit of rondo form plus mysterious questionings, a hint at a chorale-prelude and a coda that brings the sonata to an astonishing, whirlwind conclusion.

The variation form intrigued Brahms, as it did Beethoven. The New Grove lists a remarkable thirty-one sets of variations by the earlier composer, only nine sets by Brahms. Among the best-loved is the Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 35. Composed ten years after the sonatas, this showpiece uses the Caprice No. 24 for its series of brilliant, exhilarating turns upon a familiar theme.

Several years later, in 1879, Brahms composed a pair of works, each designated as a rhapsody with that form’s expressiveness and freedom of movement, with plenty of scope for the performer to demonstrate an impressive technique. The B Minor Rhapsody, Op.79, makes a dynamic impression, lyrical and majestic by turns, never predictable, and always offering new delights of pianism at its most accomplished. -Notes by John Stege

Nowadays it’s hard to imagine Johannes Brahms as a controversial figure, but in his day, the last half of the nineteenth century, his musical style drew loud outcries from critics, fellow composers and performers alike for one basic reason. Brahms saw himself, and was seen by others, as a champion for the great “classic” musical tradition most clearly defined by the works of Beethoven. Call it, loosely, an abstract, more form-driven music as opposed to the self-consciously dramatic or programmatic compositions of Berlioz or Liszt or Wagner. Brahms’ adherence to this relatively conservative mode provoked virulent attacks on his “old-fashioned” music by representatives of the music of the future, advocates of what was dubbed the New German School. That stodgy, bourgeois image of plump Papa Brahms seated at an upright piano, puffing contentedly on a cigar, still remains alive in many minds, and it’s at least partly a slander by his enemies.

The composer was never simply a plump Papa, especially not at the dynamic opening of his professional career. Then it was a golden-haired, angelic and beardless Brahms, barely twenty, who made his dramatic appearance on the musical scene. His sudden fame had its beginnings with piano sonatas, regarded by some as passé exercises in old-fashioned formalism. His sonatas, provoking a stupendous, influential endorsement from Robert Schumann, propelled the boyish composer into the very heart of the contemporary musical milieu.

Brahms, in some sense, saw himself as next in line to assume the mantle of Beethoven, although not necessarily on the same scale. Beethoven’s piano sonatas, all thirty-two of them, assume a central place in the canon. The younger composer’s three sonatas, written in the two years before and just after his twentieth birthday, make an unmistakable statement that the older tradition is alive and well in the fingers and imagination of a vital new protagonist.

Scholars disagree about Brahms’ earliest work at the piano. Some claim, assisted by hints from the older Brahms, that in his early teens, he played dance music in Hamburg’s waterfront brothels to help support his impoverished family. More recent scholarship disputes this as lurid speculation. There’s no disputing, though, that his youthful skill at the keyboard commanded recognition beginning with his first public concert, aged fourteen, in 1847. Five years later, after an interim occupied by teaching, study and composition, he and the violinist Eduard Reményi embarked upon a brief, well-received tour of concerts in small German venues.

A somewhat disagreeable climax of the tour found Brahms visiting Liszt at Weimar in June, 1853, where the world-renowned older virtuoso played through Brahms’ C Major Sonata, apparently finding it impressive. Liszt then played his own flamboyant, newly-composed B Minor Sonata. Reményi reported that Brahms fell asleep during the Master’s performance. True or not, the fact remains that Liszt never conducted or performed in public a work by Brahms, and the two men remained at professional odds all their lives.

A few weeks later, though, on September 30, a far more momentous meeting was to take place. Brahms called upon Robert and Clara Schumann at their home in Düsseldorf. Though at first nervous and insecure, he played his sonatas and other pieces for the famous couple. They were thunderstruck by the achievement of this child-like youth with an unbroken voice. In her journals Clara wrote, “Here again is one who comes as if sent from God!“ Robert immediately set out to publicize the arrival of a blazing new talent.

The notorious upshot of this meeting appeared in the October 28, 1853 issue of the powerful Neue Zeitschrift für Musik with an article by Schumann entitled Neue Bahnen, “New Paths,” putting Brahms squarely and controversially in the middle of the musical map. Citing him as one “springing forth like Minerva fully armed from the head of Jove,” whose works “reveal to us wondrous regions,” Schumann declared his sonatas to be “veiled symphonies.” The over-the-top extravagance and rather bewildering imagery of the article may tell us more about Schumann than about Brahms, but the younger composer’s path had been laid out for him.

The C Major Sonata, Op. 1, is actually the second of the three piano sonatas Brahms composed in 1852/53, and in it, Brahms shows himself to be a true Beethovener right from its opening theme, a gesture toward Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. The vigor and energy of the older composer permeate a work whose shape pays homage to the formal sonata tradition while making a distinctive personal statement. Its lyrical second movement offers variations on an old German song:

The moon steals out / Blue, blue little flower, Through silver clouds he takes his course / Blue, blue little flower. Roses in the valley, maiden in her chamber, O most beautiful Rosa!

Composed earlier than the C Major Sonata, the F# Minor Sonata, Op. 2, makes a more freely expressive, almost rhapsodic impression. The nervous, unsettled opening Allegro gives way to an Andante con espressione that is exactly that: an emotionally probing exercise in deep introspection. As in all three of the sonatas, this slow movement has a basis in song: here, an old Minnesinger lyric, “Mir ist leide” (“It saddens me that winter has bared the wood and heath”). Following a Mendelssohnian Scherzo, the Finale concludes the work in high Romantic fashion, virtuosic and often capricious despite its serious modalities.

The third and last piano sonata that Brahms was to compose can be seen as an extended commentary and reflection upon the first two sonatas. The F Minor Sonata, Op. 5, an immense, five-movement work, contains significant elements of Op. 1, its rhapsodic quality for example, and Op. 2, its caprice and virtuosity. A massive, stormy opening movement leads into a pensive, deeply lyrical Andante reminiscent of Beethoven’s slow movements. Brahms takes his cue from a Sternau lyric:

The twilight falls, the moonlight gleams, Two hearts in love unite, Embraced in rapture.

The Scherzo that follows, a full-blown, picaresque showpiece, moves into an Intermezzo subtitled “Reminiscence,” a meditation upon the previous Andante, only now more marked and less lyrical. A kaleidoscopic Finale offers a bit of rondo form plus mysterious questionings, a hint at a chorale-prelude and a coda that brings the sonata to an astonishing, whirlwind conclusion.

The variation form intrigued Brahms, as it did Beethoven. The New Grove lists a remarkable thirty-one sets of variations by the earlier composer, only nine sets by Brahms. Among the best-loved is the Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 35. Composed ten years after the sonatas, this showpiece uses the Caprice No. 24 for its series of brilliant, exhilarating turns upon a familiar theme.

Several years later, in 1879, Brahms composed a pair of works, each designated as a rhapsody with that form’s expressiveness and freedom of movement, with plenty of scope for the performer to demonstrate an impressive technique. The B Minor Rhapsody, Op.79, makes a dynamic impression, lyrical and majestic by turns, never predictable, and always offering new delights of pianism at its most accomplished. -Notes by John Stege

Producer: John Noel RobertsRecording Engineer: Fred HortonDigital Editor: Fred HortonRecorded: Op. 5 and Op. 35 [June 22-23, 2006], Op. 2 and Op. 79 [June 18-19, 2007], Op. 1 [May 13-14, 2008], in Neva Langley Fickling Hall of the McCorkle Music Building, Mercer University, Macon, GeorgiaPiano Technician: Charles CookGraphic Design: Matthew SmithProject Manager: Tommy Joe Anderson

This recording was made possible by a grant from Mercer University.

This project is dedicated to the memory of Joan May Thompson Roberts.

ACA Digital Recording, P.O. Box 450727, Atlanta, GA 31145© 2009 ACA Digital Recording, Inc.P

John Noel Roberts is a pianist whose artistry and pedagogy has gained widespread appreciation. He has demonstrated his interpretive skills, technical ability and his wide-ranging repertoire in solo and concerto performances in Great Britain, Australia, India, Canada, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Italy, Japan and Malaysia.

Roberts has appeared as guest soloist with such ensembles as the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Lima Symphony Orchestra, Greenville Symphony Orchestra, Penang Festival Orchestra, Western Australian Symphony Orchestra, Charlotte Philharmonia Orchestra and the Macon Symphony Orchestra. In recent years, he has participated in A Winter Musical Feast, a chamber music festival in Perth, Australia; performed in Hibiki Hall in Kitakyshu, Japan; participated in The Friends of Alec Wilder annual concert in New York City; and presented recitals at L’auditorium Nuovo Montemezzi, Verona and the Teatro Olympico, Vicenze in Italy.

A native of Texas, Roberts received early piano studies with Sister Mary Elaine Gentemann, C.D.P. at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio. He later graduated from the Eastman School of Music, where he was a student of Eugene List and Barry Snyder and was awarded the Performer’s Certificate in Piano. He continued his graduate studies at the Yale University School of Music, where he received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree. At Yale, he studied with Claude Frank and Ward Davenny and was a winner in the Sprague Hall Competition.

Formerly Artist in Residence and Head of Music at the Western Australian Conservatorium of Music of the Edith Cowan University, John Noel Roberts has also served on the faculties at Furman University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Roberts is currently the Callaway Professor of Music at Mercer University.

John Noel Roberts can also be heard on the ACA Digital Recording releases CM20089 Frédéric Chopin: Poetry at the Piano and EM30009 Quest: Piano Works by Sister Mary Elaine Gentemann.

Producer: John Noel RobertsRecording Engineer: Fred HortonDigital Editor: Fred HortonRecorded: Op. 5 and Op. 35 [June 22-23, 2006], Op. 2 and Op. 79 [June 18-19, 2007], Op. 1 [May 13-14, 2008], in Neva Langley Fickling Hall of the McCorkle Music Building, Mercer University, Macon, GeorgiaPiano Technician: Charles CookGraphic Design: Matthew SmithProject Manager: Tommy Joe Anderson

This recording was made possible by a grant from Mercer University.

This project is dedicated to the memory of Joan May Thompson Roberts.

ACA Digital Recording, P.O. Box 450727, Atlanta, GA 31145© 2009 ACA Digital Recording, Inc.P

John Noel Roberts is a pianist whose artistry and pedagogy has gained widespread appreciation. He has demonstrated his interpretive skills, technical ability and his wide-ranging repertoire in solo and concerto performances in Great Britain, Australia, India, Canada, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Italy, Japan and Malaysia.

Roberts has appeared as guest soloist with such ensembles as the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Lima Symphony Orchestra, Greenville Symphony Orchestra, Penang Festival Orchestra, Western Australian Symphony Orchestra, Charlotte Philharmonia Orchestra and the Macon Symphony Orchestra. In recent years, he has participated in A Winter Musical Feast, a chamber music festival in Perth, Australia; performed in Hibiki Hall in Kitakyshu, Japan; participated in The Friends of Alec Wilder annual concert in New York City; and presented recitals at L’auditorium Nuovo Montemezzi, Verona and the Teatro Olympico, Vicenze in Italy.

A native of Texas, Roberts received early piano studies with Sister Mary Elaine Gentemann, C.D.P. at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio. He later graduated from the Eastman School of Music, where he was a student of Eugene List and Barry Snyder and was awarded the Performer’s Certificate in Piano. He continued his graduate studies at the Yale University School of Music, where he received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree. At Yale, he studied with Claude Frank and Ward Davenny and was a winner in the Sprague Hall Competition.

Formerly Artist in Residence and Head of Music at the Western Australian Conservatorium of Music of the Edith Cowan University, John Noel Roberts has also served on the faculties at Furman University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Roberts is currently the Callaway Professor of Music at Mercer University.

John Noel Roberts can also be heard on the ACA Digital Recording releases CM20089 Frédéric Chopin: Poetry at the Piano and EM30009 Quest: Piano Works by Sister Mary Elaine Gentemann.

© 2008 ACA Digital Recording, Inc.P

CM20099

1[01]-[04] Sonata No. 1 in C Major, Op. 1[05]-[08] Sonata No. 2 in F# Minor, Op. 2

© 2008 ACA Digital Recording, Inc.P

CM20099

2[01]-[05] Sonata No. 3 in F Minor, Op. 5[06] Rhapsody in B Minor, Op. 79, No. 1[07] Variations on a Theme by Paganini, Op. 35, Bk. 1

© 2009 ACA Digital Recording, Inc.PCM20099

Th

e C

om

plet

e P

ian

o S

on

atas

of

Joh

ann

es B

rah

ms

|

Joh

n N

oel

Ro

bert

sCM

2009

9

05092 009927 3

Sonata No. 1 in C Major, Op. 1 [30:47] Allegro (11:29) Andante (5:55) Scherzo: Allegro molto e con fuoco (5:55) Finale: Allegro con fuoco (7:24)

Sonata No. 2 in F# Minor, Op. 2 [27:17] Allegro non troppo, ma energico (6:12) Andante con espressione (5:53) Scherzo: Allegro (4:06) Finale: Introduzione (sostenuto) – (2:54) Allegro non troppo e rubato

Total Track Time [58:04]

01.02.03.04.

05.06.07.08.

Sonata No. 3 in F Minor, Op. 5 [36:49] Allegro maestoso (9:40) Andante espressivo – Andante molto (10:34) Scherzo: Allegro energico (5:00) Intermezzo (Rückblick): (3:24) Andante molto Finale: Allegro moderato ma rubato (8:05)

Rhapsody in B Minor, Op. 79, No. 1 [10:12]

Variations on a Theme by Paganini, [13:39]Op. 35, Book 1

Total Track Time [60:41]

01.02.03.04.

05.

06.

07.

Disc 1 Disc 2

Th

e Co

mplete P

iano

Son

atas of Jo

han

nes B

rahm

s | Joh

n N

oel R

oberts

CM20099