Alexander Krichel Leise Schubert#

"I have composed a big sonata and variations for four hands, and the latter have met with a specially good reception here, but I do not entirely trust Hungarian taste, and I shall leave it to you and to the Viennese to decide their true merit" So wrote Franz Schubert in 1824, evoking the popular 19th-century genre for 4-hands piano that publishers were always pestering him to write for. In his brief life Schubert devoted 32 compositions to this form and the least of these pieces, be it a ländler, polonaise or march, radiates with all of his finesse and sensitivity

Terfel's gift is a generous, individual voice, a natural feeling for German and an inborn abil- ity to go to the heart of what he attempts. His singing here is grand in scale – listen to any of the dramatic songs and the point is made – but like Hotter, whom he so often resembles, he's able to reduce his large voice to the needs of a sustained, quiet line, as in Meerestille. When the two come together as in Der Wanderer, the effect can be truly electrifying, even more so, perhaps, in Erlkönig where the four participants are superbly contrasted. Yet this is a voice that can also smile, as in An die Laute and 'Die Taubenpost' or express wonder, as in Ganymed, a most exhilarating interpretation, or again explode in sheer anger as in the very first song, the strenuous Gruppe aus dem Tartarus.

A nod toward historical authenticity is de rigueur in many kinds of performances, but performances of Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata in A minor, D. 821, on the instrument for which it was written are rare indeed. The performer who wants to undertake one faces several obstacles. Few examples of the arpeggione exist; the instrument was invented in Vienna in 1823 but quickly fell out of fashion. That might have been because, with six strings (it is something like a bowed guitar), it is quite difficult to play, and Schubert's sonata is the only major work written for it. Yet the instrument has a truly lovely voice, gentle and songful in its upper register where a cellist really has to bear down. Cellist Alexander Rudin has mastered its intricacies here, and the work emerges as quite idiomatically written for its instrument, not at all as a novelty.

Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata has today become part of the cello repertoire but it was originally written for the arpeggione, a form of bowed guitar invented by the Viennese maker Johann Georg Staufer in 1823. With a unique ethereal sound, this instrument reveals the true beauty of Schubert’s initial conception. The Piano Trio No. 2 was performed at the Vienna Musikverein on the first anniversary of Beethoven’s death—its extremes of urgent drama and sublime bittersweet lyricism are characteristic of Schubert’s artistic surge during his final year.

These are marvellous performances: vibrant, clear, characterful and effortlessly well played. The recordings, too, still seem new-minted, even the Ninth, the first of the symphonies to be recorded. The Berliners' art is the art that disguises art. Böhm never feels the need to do anything clever but just quietly sees to it that this superb orchestra plays at its best. Böhm's way with the two late symphonies is, in fact, highly sophisticated.