Today, Weber is best known for his operas but he was also a pianist. He wrote a sizeable body of piano music, at the center of which is his four sonatas. Perhaps the first truly Romantic piano sonatas, they influenced the next generation of German composers such as Mendelssohn and Schumann. Though these works are large scale and virtuosic, they are rarely recorded. The program also includes the once hugely popular Invitation to the Dance, a work that has become better known in the orchestration by Berlioz. Performed here by Garrick Ohlsson, these acclaimed performances were originally released on Arabesque.