Schubert d 574 Mulova

Distilled sparingly over the course of Franz Schubert’s all too brief life, the few works that make up his output for violin and piano fascinate and intrigue, writing the episodes of a story that is undoubtedly fragmentary, yet in reality deeply unified in a mysterious yearning for elsewhere. Situated somewhere between the miniature of the lied and the large symphonic forms, these pieces open countless windows onto Schubert’s contrasted and tormented universe. Nathalia and Maria Milstein’s choice of a splendid Blüthner piano of 1857 plays a crucial role in the quest for unheard-of sound worlds on which this disc invites us.

This album includes the complete Franz Schubert Sonatas for Violin and Piano, performed on period instruments. Elizabeth Holowell is an eminent teacher of violin and viola, chamber music and string orchestra, with extensive experience at universities and music colleges in Australasia and Britain. Her graduates are found in many major international orchestras. She was herself a student of Robert Pikler who was, in turn, taught by Hubay and by Thibaud. Elizabeth was a core member of the Australian Chamber Orchestra and has played in the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, the William Hennessy String Quartet, and the Newcastle University Piano Trio.

The summer of 1886 was one of the most prolific in the life of Johannes Brahms. The alpine grandeur of Lake Thun and Brahms’s buoyant holiday mood conjured up so many melodies that he declared he was “afraid to step on them”. In a few weeks’ time, Brahms produced two of his major chamber works, the Cello Sonata, op.99, and the Violin Sonata, op.100, that suits the cello delightfully. These chamber icons are aptly coupled to Schubert’s blissfully uplifting Sonata, D574. Cello virtuoso Pieter Wispelwey is at once playful and profound in these summer works, and his interpretation is, from now on, open to debate in The Interpretation Room.