Alexander Krichel Leise Schubert#

Schubert set the poetry of over 115 writers to music. He selected poems from classical Greece, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, from eighteenth-century German authors, early Romantics, Biedermeier poets, and Heine. The Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition presents all Schubert’s Lieder, over 700 songs, grouped according to the poets who inspired him. Thanks to the Bärenreiter’s Neue Schubert-Ausgabe (New Schubert Edition), Tübingen, which uses primary sources, the performers have been able to benefit from the most recent research of the editorial team.

Dwarfing even the late Beethoven quartets in sheer length, Schubert's final String Quartet in G major, D. 887, clocks in at nearly an hour of performance time. This ambitious length made it difficult to appreciate in Schubert's Vienna and can even be a test of focus for modern audiences if anything but a superb performance is put forward. Fortunately for listeners of this Onyx album, the Kuss Quartet produces just such a performance. The approach to Schubert offers far more drive, intensity, and grit than the vast majority of recordings available.

Once again, the piano duo of Goldstone and Clemmow has discovered works transcribed for piano, four-hands that are sure to fascinate not only fans of piano duets, but also those of the original composer. Through observant reading of a biography of Schubert, the team realized that transcriptions had been made of some of his chamber music by one Josef von Gahy. Gahy was one of Schubert's closest friends in Vienna, a civil servant, and very accomplished amateur pianist. Gahy frequently played Schubert's piano music at evening Schubertiades, but more importantly, Gahy and Schubert often played duets at the piano together.

Schubert's final four quartets represent the last flowering of the Viennese Classical style. Their melodic generosity has always appealed to music lovers (and quartet players), though in the hands of some less disciplined ensembles the music can tend to sprawl. That's never a danger with these warm, impulsive performances, which allow the music's natural lyricism to flow vigorously without ever becoming sticky or sentimental. Schubert's String Quartet No. 12 is the single movement also known as the Quartettensatz ("Quartet Movement"), but the other three quartets are full-length, indeed epic works that bear comparison with the late works of Beethoven in musical richness and profundity.

'The 94-year-old elder statesman of classical music' (The New York Times) joins forces with the Gewandhausorchester for a Schubert programme of Symphonies No. 8 ('Unfinished') and No. 9 ('The Great'), released just in time for his 95th birthday on 11th July 2022. The choice of repertoire for his late debut with Deutsche Grammophon was quickly made: Herbert Blomstedt, at 94 the world's 'longest-serving' conductor and still one of the most vital, chose Franz Schubert's last two symphonies, the 'Unfinished' in B minor and the 'Great' in C major. With the Gewandhaus Orchestra, which he presided over as Gewandhauskapellmeister from 1998 to 2005 and has since been closely associated with as honorary conductor, he had at his disposal an orchestra that is very familiar with Schubert's music.

Following the Artemis Quartet‘s prizewinning Beethoven Quartet cycle on Virgin Classics, the Berlin-based ensemble has recorded Schubert’s last three quartets, works that Artemis cellist Eckart Runge praises for both their “incredible simplicity and purity” and their “almost terrifying modernism”.

‘Goerne’s way with phrasing is quite admirable. He does not carve, he sculpts. One listens to Schubert’s phrases as one would stroke polished marble. Never an intonation for the sake of effect, never a superfluous accent’ (Sylvain Fort, Diapason). After the first volume of the Matthias Goerne Schubert Edition, this double album speaks of death, of the ‘Wanderer’, and of the relationship between Schubert and his poets . . . For this occasion the singer has called on two travelling companions who have left a lasting artistic impression on the world of the lied.

Initially a bassoonist, Marc Minkowski began conducting at an early age, notably under the guidance of Charles Bruck at the Pierre Monteux Memorial School in the United States. At the age of nineteen he founded Les Musiciens du Louvre, an ensemble that was to play an active role in the Baroque revival. After their success at the Wiener Konzerthaus in 2009 with a complete cycle of Haydn's 'London' Symphonies recorded live by Na+¯ve (their exclusive record label since 2007), Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble now release the complete Schubert symphonies.

In the latest chapter in Sir Andras Schiff’s ongoing documentation of Franz Schubert’s music, the great pianist plays the Four Impromptus D 899, and compositions from 1828, the last year of Schubert’s too brief life: the Three Pieces D 946 (“impromptus in all but name” notes Misha Donat in the CD booklet), the C minor Sonata D 958 and the A major Sonata D 959.