Schubert Quatuors et Quintettes

Dans l'histoire de l'enregistrement, le pianiste Richter est bien celui dont les éditions témoignent de la plus hallucinante autant que pléthorique foutraquerie, mâtinée de beaucoup de redondances sur fond d'éditions pirates et officieuses. C'est la vraie tour de Babel de l'édition musicale, et Brueghel l'Ancien n'a plus qu'à aller se rhabiller de son manteau de probité. Je renonce donc ici (ce réveillon de fin d'année m'a tué) à recenser ma discothèque personnelle (quelque 15 000 disques…) pour discerner si, dans l'ordre ou dans le désordre, ce qu'on trouve sur ce CD nous est donné pour la première fois, ou si c'est là doublon partiel ou intégral, voire la trois virgule quatorze cent seizième version du même par les mêmes.

While these recordings by the Hungarian Quartet contain perfectly acceptable performances and adequately idiomatic interpretations of Schubert's later chamber music for string quartet and quintet, they contain nothing more than that. In the late '50s and early '60s, the Hungarian Quartet was a widely respected group playing in the central European tradition of plumy intonation, sugary sonorities, sometimes scrappy ensemble, and often sentimental interpretations.

Gardiner’s interpretation of Schubert’s great, often visionary A flat Mass, the work that absorbed him longer than any other, stands somewhere between the generously moulded, romantically inclined Sawallisch and the fresh, guileless reading from Bruno Weil using an all-male choir and boy soloists. Where Gardiner immediately scores is in the sheer poise and refinement of his performance: neither of the other choirs sings with such effortless blend, such perfect dynamic control or such precise intonation – a crucial advantage in, say, the tortuous chromaticism of the ‘Crucifixus’. Equally predictably, the orchestral playing is superb, with a ravishing contribution from the woodwind, who throughout the Mass are favoured with some of Schubert’s most poetic writing.

Since they started their own KML label, the Labèque sisters have turned in one superb recording after another. First came a brilliant all-Ravel disc, then an incandescent disc of Debussy and Stravinsky, and now a disc combining Schubert and Mozart: the former with his colossal Fantasy in F minor, D. 940, plus the melancholy Andantino varié in B minor, D. 823, and the latter, with his monumental Sonata in D major, D. 448. In all three works, the Labèques are magnificent, but very different.

Pornification est le roman d'une vie en chute libre. Un roman biographique réaliste autant qu'imaginaire de Karin Schubert, une actrice qui a commencé dans les années 1960 une belle carrière internationale, tournant avec les meilleurs cinéastes en Allemagne, en France ou en Italie (elle fut notamment la reine de La Folie des grandeurs de Gérard Oury) avant de dégringoler peu à peu dans le cinéma érotique puis pornographique. Loin de la tentation voyeuriste, Jean-Luc Marret compose un roman plein de délicatesse et d'empathie, bouleversant d'humanité. …

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.

In nearly every respect this is outstanding. The Rondo brillant and the Fantasie, both written for the virtuoso duo of Karl von Bocklet and Josef Slawik, can sound as if Schubert were striving for a brilliant, flashy style, foreign to his nature. Both are in places uncomfortable to play (when first published, the Fantasie’s violin part was simplified), but you would never guess this from Faust’s and Melnikov’s performance; they both nonchalantly toss off any problem passages as though child’s play. The Fantasie’s finale and the Rondo brillant are irresistibly lively and spirited, and this duo’s technical finesse extends to more poetic episodes – Melnikov’s tremolo at the start of the Fantasie shimmers delicately, while the filigree passagework in the last of the variations that form the Fantasie’s centrepiece have a delightful poise and sense of ease.