Carl Maria Von Weber - Legacy

Legacy

Weber's piano music all but disappeared from the repertoire. One possible reason for this is that Weber had very large hands and delighted in writing music that suited them. There are several recordings of the major works for the solo piano (including complete recordings of the piano sonatas and the shorter piano pieces, by Garrick Ohlsson, Alexander Paley and others), and there are recordings of the individual sonatas by Claudio Arrau (1st Sonata), Alfred Brendel (2nd Sonata), Sviatoslav Richter (3rd Sonata) and Leon Fleisher (4th Sonata). The Invitation to the Dance, although better known in Berlioz's orchestration (as part of the ballet music for a Paris production of Der Freischütz), has long been played and recorded by pianists (e.g., Benno Moiseiwitsch ). Invitation to the Dance also served as the thematic basis for Benny Goodman's swing theme song for the radio program Let's Dance.