Fialkowska Schubert

likely to divide listeners. Some may object to French players performing Austro-German music, while others will embrace the notion of musical internationalism. Others may object to first-rate Schubert being joined to second-rate Hummel, while others will enjoy the chance to hear an unfamiliar as well as a familiar work. After they hear it, however, most listeners will likely agree on two things. First, they will likely find that the French players do a marvelous job of breathing life into both these works.

She's not shy, this Anne-Sofie von Otter. Her performances are, to say the least, incredibly expressive. Her Suleika I (D. 720) is Brigitte Bardot in Contempt. Her Im Abendrot (D. 799) is Kim Novak in Vertigo. Her Totengräbers Heimweh is Eli Walach in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Nor is von Otter dumb. Her interpretations are sly, subtle, and very, very sensitive. Her Der Wanderer an den Mond (D. 870) is hearty and lightly but profoundly philosophical.

Juliette Hurel's 2013 album on Naïve explores pieces for flute and piano by Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert, evoking the period between Classicism and early Romanticism. Perhaps the subtlest work of the program is Beethoven's Flute Sonata in B flat major, WoO A4, written in 1790 and fashioned under the influence of Haydn. Its sunny disposition and light textures are periodically interrupted by unexpected key changes and sudden digressions into the minor, characteristics that anticipate Beethoven's later development and mark it as a transitional work. His Serenade for flute and piano, Op. 41, is an arrangement of the Serenade for flute, violin, and viola, Op. 25, and it has a similar, if sometimes deceptive, air of Classical simplicity, which is all the more apparent because of the brevity of the movements. Only Schubert's Variations on a Theme from Die schöne Müllerin is unequivocally Romantic, and its sudden changes of mood and key make it the most fascinating piece on the disc.

This was to be the end of the line for Italian word-setting by Viennese composers: once the confident sentiments that belonged to the poet Metastasio's opera seria felt the chill and threatening wind of Enlightenment and Revolution, their time was up. Even we, for the most part, prefer to remember the German-speaking Beethoven, Schubert and Haydn. So it is good to be reminded of their responses to the Italian muse (usually as part of their craft-learning student work) in this particularly well-cast recital. Central Europe, in the person of Andras Schiff meets Italy, in Cecilia Bartoli, to delightful, often revelatory effect.

One might be forgiven for initially thinking that this recital featuring works for cello and piano by Franz Schubert, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg was, well, a stunt. After all, aside from their birth in the city of Vienna, what do the three composers have in common? Schubert was the quintessential master of lyrical Austro-German romanticism, while Webern and Berg were two of the three most reviled masters of atonal Austro-German expressionism – the third, of course, was Arnold Schoenberg – and one might think they'd be an impossible coupling.

This is a reissue CD set of the 15 Schubert Quartets by the Weiner (Vienna) Konzerthaus Quartet. This 6 CD set was issued by Universal Music France in 1998. The 20-bit remastering from the original master tapes is excellent. Although these hard to find monaural Westminster label recordings date from 1950 to 1953, the sound is full and warm. The playing and performances are superb. The CD booklet notes in French and English leave something to desire. However, this CD set is worth getting your hands on while it's still available!

"The trees are coming into leaf/Like something almost being said." Taking a cue from these lines of Philip Larkin, pianist Simone Dinnerstein casts her album of the music of J.S. Bach and Franz Schubert in poetic terms. Her understanding of the composers is summed up in her own words: "The music of Bach and Schubert share a distinctive quality, as if wordless voices were singing textless melodies." Of course, Bach and Schubert were masters of setting texts to profoundly expressive music, so it is fruitful to look for the lyrical impulse in their keyboard works and appropriate to find songful interpretations. Yet Dinnerstein doesn't merely serve up rhapsodic renditions or treat the music as some kind of tuneful vehicle for idiosyncratic or personal reveries. Her playing is quite in character for both composers, and her treatment of the material is far from self-indulgent.

Abbado’s complete Schubert symphony cycle is a benchmark recording, exhibiting a “freshness of approach and authentic Schubertian warmth and glow” (Gramophone). Not only does this collection contain the entire collection of Abbado's Schubert symphonies, it also features the added bonus of Joseph Joachim’s great orchestration of the "Grand Duo", originally for piano duet, now a virtual symphony in its own right.

Anthony Goldstone and Caroline Clemmow have already established themselves in the Schubert discography with their world class recordings of Schubert's piano works. Goldstone, in particular, has a reputation for being one of Schubert's greatest champions. The caliber of his interpretations is simply phenomenal. Beyond this, when Clemmow joins Goldstone to form their illustrious piano duo, we have been given an ambrosia of world premiere piano arrangements: Mendelssohn's 3rd, Dvorak's 9th, Tchaikovsky's 4th, his Romeo and Juliet overture, Grieg's piano concerto, and now these exquisite rarities of Schubert.

In the course of the 1996-97 season, Anima Eterna played and recorded Schubert's complete symphonies in the particularly innovative interpretation of their conductor, Jos van Immerseel. This interpretation, based on the study of Schubert's manuscripts and on the instruments used at the time of their first performance, allows us to discover sound colours that combine freshness and profundity.