Fabio Romano (piano) Wergo WER 6808 2***

Jörg Widmann's Toccata is like a series of assaults, explosively violent attacks on the piano that leave resonances lingering in the air like sonic spaces waiting to be filled. It ends violently, too, with the piano lid dropping closed, and the pianist continuing to play on the case of the piano. Fleur du mal, a "sonata after Baudelaire", is full of resonances as well, and, like the Toccata, has moments that fleetingly coalesce into reminders of the past, more 20th century than 19th century in the case of the sonata. The hard-hitting Fabio Romano couples the two pieces with two works by Schumann, a composer Widmann has long been obsessed with. Romano opens the Nachstücke in a way that's extremely laboured, even pedantic. He recovers, but he's altogether more at home in a ruminative account of the later Gesänge der Frühe. See wergo.de