New recordings from Anne-Marie McDermott

Anne-Marie McDermott has an impressive discography with the enterprising Bridge Records, including a pair of major new releases. Her traversal of two Franz Schubert piano sonatas, D. 850 and D. 960, came out in November 2021.

“I had long dreamed about recording them, especially the B-flat sonata [D. 960],” she says. “I played it in public a lot 15 or so years ago, and I picked it up again during the pandemic, just to make myself feel better.” It was recorded at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, about 5 miles north of Albany, New York.

Why such an out-of-the-way venue? “The acoustics are divine. Plus, we could get in for five straight days, and you need that much time for these pieces. You have to record them in full movements, rather than smaller takes.”

The B-flat sonata is one of the most frequently recorded Schubert sonatas and, as McDermott admits, “The world doesn’t need another recording of it, but I really wanted to make my own statement about the piece, given how important it is to me.”

McDermott also has a forthcoming release in her widely acclaimed series of the complete Mozart piano concertos. Volume four includes “two of the big ones,” as she put it, No. 20 in D minor and No. 25 in C major. The former was a particular favorite of Beethoven in his guise as a keyboard virtuoso, and he wrote several cadenzas for it. “Everyone, including me, chooses the biggest,” McDermott says.

Mozart didn’t write cadenzas for No. 25, either. (When pressed for time, he would improvise them at the keyboard during the premiere and didn’t always write them into his scores afterward.) McDermott has an ingenious solution to the problem: She commissions them from rising young composers. In this case, it’s by Chris Rogerson, whose Dream Sequence had its well-received world premiere in a Pro Musica concert here on Oct. 17, 2021. “What he did with the Mozart is epic!” McDermott says. For more information, visit bridgerecords.com.