Schunert Impromptus

Pianist Gerardo Teissonnière follows up his highly acclaimed Steinway & Sons debut recording with an album of Franz Schubert's complete Impromptus, an important cornerstone of the entire piano literature.

This Walter Gieseking programme is a breathtaking collection of piano works by Franz Schubert, performed with masterful skill and delicate touch.

Above the album worked the 'Klára Würtz, Folke Nauta & Alberto Miodini - Schubert: Complete Impromptus ', and his release took place on 2021. The album has got songs with a total duration of more than an hour. A compilation is a compilation of original music.

There are interpretations of Schubert’s Impromptus that are full of poetry and lyricism, full of internalization (I’m thinking of Perianes and Pires), and there are much harsher, hard-chiseled ones (Ashkenazy). Cyprien Katsaris combines both views, thus achieving interesting contrasts. He reveals the singing Schubert as well as the rumbling, even the hot-tempered and angry Schubert, and all this in a very clear, transparent piano sound, in which also expressive levels can be revealed without blurring.

Perhaps in response to the work of Edward Said, it has become fashionable to think of an artist’s final works as embodying shared traits that might be characterised as ‘late style’ – whether a mastery of craft, depth of expression, or a realisation of mortality with associated aspects of sorrow or serenity. In the case of Schubert, who died at the age of 31, the idea of anything being ‘late’ feels rather melancholy, a description applied retrospectively – did Schubert know that he would not compose any more piano sonatas, another symphony, another song cycle? Whatever Schubert’s awareness of his own life expectancy, his rate of composition increased markedly in his final 12 months, when he brought to fruition an extraordinary number of masterpieces.

Well-known for her chamber collaborations and piano duo with Charles Owen – with whom she is artistic director of the London Piano Festival – this is Katya Apekisheva’s first solo disc on Champs Hill Records, on which she brings her artistry to Impromptus by Scriabin, Faure and Chopin.

What’s in a title? When a composer sets out to compose, very often inspiration comes in the form of works of various length that do not have a specific designation.

"The way into Schubert’s world is full of twists and turns… A lengthy progress towards what I’ve always thought to be the ultimate expression of the lightness of being … For me, playing Schubert is the culmination of a voyage of self-discovery … You’re plunged into the same self-doubt, experience the same joy he did. I can find my self in this intimate exchange.