Schunert Impromptus

Aimi Kobayashi, who rose to prominence as a prizewinner at the 2021 International Chopin Piano Competition, has been praised by Gramophone as a pianist who can “rivet the attention through fine-drawn line and hushed dynamics as much as through vivid gesture and brute force”.

The cosmopolitan Franz Liszt and the unpretentious Franz Schubert couldn't have been more unlike in terms of lives that they led. But with their musical oeuvre, they maintain a symbiotic relationship to this day: Schubert's works were always an inspiring, 'magnificent treasure' to Liszt, which he was very fond of sharing with the world. Therefore Liszt was an advocate of Schubert's reception wherever possible. On concert tours, he also always had Schubert's music with him, including many lieder as piano transcriptions. Viacheslav Apostel-Pankratowsky traces the synergies of this artistic alliance on his debut CD with GENUIN: with exceptional reserve, energetic musical language, and warm nuance.

It's hard to imagine better performances of these works, either technically or emotionally. Brendel takes a relatively straight line through the works that reveals their varied emotional glory. This is beauty through structure, realized though a heartfelt and thoroughly considered, yet spontaneous-sounding performance. This wonderous music is simple in form, but beautiful and emotional when played spectacularly well as here by Brendel.

In the latest chapter in Sir Andras Schiff’s ongoing documentation of Franz Schubert’s music, the great pianist plays the Four Impromptus D 899, and compositions from 1828, the last year of Schubert’s too brief life: the Three Pieces D 946 (“impromptus in all but name” notes Misha Donat in the CD booklet), the C minor Sonata D 958 and the A major Sonata D 959.

The programme for Alexandre Tharaud's first album of Schubert comprises the four Impromptus D 899 (op 90), the six Moments musicaux and, in Tharaud's own transcription for piano, four excerpts from the stage music for Rosamunde. When Tharaud performed the Impromptus at London's Wigmore Hall in 2014, The Guardian wrote: "He got to the heart of the beauties and abysses of this music."