Schubert Master Work

In this recording of the complete piano sonatas on period instruments, the Viennese master Paul Badura-Skoda delivers the work of a lifetime: Schubert's music with his passion, his suffering, and that inimitable tone which makes his native city the place so essentially and existentially identified with music. This collection of the twenty Sonatas for period piano recorded by Paul Badura-Skoda on the instruments in his own collection has every chance of being considered by posterity as one of the most creative and most significant achievements.

I was amazed to discover this wonderful performance of Schubert's D.959, by a pianist who I usually consider a bad Schubertist (in the Impromptus and last sonata, for example). In this work, however, he seems to get the very essence of the music. I've listened to many good and bad recordings of the work, notably Uchida, Eschenbach, Bolet (good performances) as well as Serkin, Brendel (worse, to my taste) and many others. The only good rival of this performance is another surprise: the romantic Liszt expert Jorge Bolet (Decca, not released on CD). Perahia seems to understand Schubert magnificently in this sonata.

Franz Schubert was deeply attached to the piano! You can sense this when you hear Robert Franz' magnificent transcription of Schubert's quartet Death and the Maiden, with which the duo Lontano (Babette Hierholzer and Jürgen Appell) open their second GENUIN album. In a recording that exclusively features Schubert’s music, the structures and the relentlessness of the work are mercilessly and yet beautifully sculpted in all their grandeur. Suddenly the quartet is very similar to the great F minor Fantasy, while the Notturno, originally for piano trio, is given a new sense of levitation. A great ensemble, two wonderful pianists, three summits of chamber music! Duo Lontano was founded in 2004. The two artists can look back on years of successful concertizing on extended tours to Italy, Germany, Venezuela, Mexico, Russia, Poland, and the USA. Recent concert highlights have included appearances in Wurzburg, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Palermo, White Plains, and Petropolis.