Paul Badura-Skoda, piano, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, violin and Boris Pergamenschikow, violoncello are among the most important musicians of the second half of the 20th century. A testimony to their rare collaboration can be found in this hitherto unpublished recording, which presents the three exceptional artists with the piano trios by Franz Schubert. The Trio No. 1 in B-flat major, op. 99, D 898 is a studio recording from the Grand Hall of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation in Vienna from 1984, the second trio in E-flat major, op. 100, D 929 was made during the Salzburg Festival in 1981 as a concert recording. These recordings provide a stunning experiencing of the superb individual class as well as chamber musical abilities of three of the greatest musicians of musical history.
Schubert: 4 Impromptus, Op. 90, D. 899 - 3 Klavierstücke, D.
Haenssler Classic
CD
$20.99Jul 21, 2017
His love for the works of Schubert led Ammiel Bushakevitz to the Art Song. He received mentorship in this field from notable singers including the late Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Thomas Quasthoff, Elly Ameling, Thomas Hampson, Matthias Goerne, Teresa Berganza and Brigitte Fassbaender. Born in Jerusalem, Israel and raised in South Africa, Ammiel Bushakevitz developed a special affinity for the music of Franz Schubert from an early age. He is a laureate of the International Franz Schubert Competition Dortmund and is a recipient of the International Schubert Institute Award in Vienna. Ammiel Bushkavitz performs regularly at notable venues across Europe, North America, Africa and Asia. Festival appearances include the festivals of Salzburg, Lucerne and Bayreuth, the Festival d'automne a Paris, the Festival Pontino di Latina in Italy, the Jerusalem Schubertiade, the Vancouver Chamber Music Series and the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence.
Schubert: Abendbilder / Christian Gerhaher, Gerold Huber
Sony Masterworks
CD
$9.98Mar 06, 2007
The recital discs of Christian Gerhaher are all excellent – and the latest addition is a collection of Schubert songs worthy falling in love with. Abendbilder (“Evensongs” or more literally: “Evening Images”) is a collection of the nocturnal explorations in song with his accompanist Gerold Huber who shines with his often delicate, always appropriate and delightful contribution.
There is a rarefied quality about Gerhaher’s Lied-interpretations… an aching beauty, sincerity, and correctness that permeates every song. His tone is finer, more sensitive than most – but never stylized. Natural, but not in a nonchalant way. What you hear on record goes well with the impression he makes in person. Friendly but somewhat impenetrable, courteous but distant, very humble but with the slightly intimidating aura of confident authority. There is purpose to what he does and how he does it – but while these are intellectual readings, they are never rarified or pedantic as not to charm the Lieder-lover without reservation.
Schubert: Lieder / Elizabeth Watts, Roger Vignoles
Sony Masterworks
CD
$11.98Jan 06, 2009
Graceful phrasing and vernal freshness characterise this promising recital
Lovers of song in the know are watching, and listening to, Elizabeth Watts. This lovely album should let others in on the secret (OK, she has won a couple of major prizes so it’s already not that much of a secret). The voice is silvery and fresh. And with such a young voice these Lieder are imbued with a sense of first love, first loss. Roger Vignoles as ever is among the most perceptive of accompanists.
-- Gramophone [2/2009]
3262500.az_SCHUBERT_Lieder_Elizabeth_Watts.html
SCHUBERT Lieder • Elizabeth Watts (sop); Roger Vignoles (pn) • RCA 732932 (71:23 Text and Translation)
An den Mond. Suleika I. Im Abendrot. Sei mir gegrüsst. Die Forelle. Heimliches Lieben. Der Sänger am Felsen. Thekla: ein Geisterstimme. An die Sonne. Aus Diego Manzanares. Nacht und Träume. Frühlingsglaube. Die Blumensprache. Nähe des Geliebten. An die Nachtigall. Liane. Des Mädchens Klage. Nachtviolen. Marie. Lambertine. Die Männer sind méchant
Here is a new release—though not her debut album—from English soprano Elizabeth Watts, who is a member of the BBC Radio 3’s “New Generation Artists” program. And what an absolutely ravishing recording it is.
Watts displayed an early interest in and talent for singing as a chorister at Norwich Cathedral, but initially pursued a more pragmatic course of study in archaeology at Sheffield University. In 2002, however, she won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music Britten International Opera School, where she studied with Lillian Watson and won several prizes, chief among which were the Kathleen Ferrier Prize in 2006 and the MIDEM Outstanding Young Artist Award in 2007. She has since been active on the British opera stage in roles that have included Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro and Papagena in The Magic Flute.
Watts’s voice, at this stage of her career, strikes me as being an ideal instrument for Schubert’s songs, calling to mind the intensely focused clarity and laser-like delivery of Elly Ameling in her four-disc Schubert collection with pianists Dalton Baldwin and Rudolf Jensen on Philips. Watts’s voice, though, has a bit more heft to it, not having quite the soubrette-like quality that makes Ameling’s voice so perfectly suited to the German Lied and French mélodie repertoire, but less so to the heavier operatic dramatic soprano roles. Watts, I think, as her voice develops and becomes weightier still, will be able to widen her own repertoire to include some of the heavier Italian opera roles of Verdi and perhaps even Puccini. It’s exciting to hear another great operatic stage soprano in the making.
Her Schubert recital is a well-chosen mix of the familiar—An den Mond, Im Abendrot, and Die Forelle—and less frequently heard songs such as Aus “Diego Manzanares, Lambertine, and Die Männer sind méchant. You can hear these songs, of course, in Graham Johnson’s comprehensive Schubert collection, assuming you have acquired every one of them. Aus Diego Manzanares, to a poem by Franz Xaver von Schlechta, appears in Volume 17 sung by Lucia Popp; Lambertine, to a poem by Josef Ludwig Stoll, is sung by Arleen Auger in Volume 9; and Die Männer sind méchant, to a poem by Johann Gabriel Seidl, appears in Volume 13, sung by Marie McLaughlin. In each case, however, comparing them side by side with Watts, I preferred Watts, both for the crystalline purity of her voice and for her highly musical phrasing and sensitive shading of the words.
Roger Vignoles has perhaps not lived and breathed Schubert quite to the extent that Graham Johnson has, nor made his mark almost exclusively as a partner in song; but Vignoles’s wider-ranging reach into chamber music and 20th-century repertoire informs his Schubert with a hindsight that can at times impart a feeling to these songs that transcends their time and place.
As densely packed with Schubert Lieder recitals as the current catalog is, it calls to mind Carl Sagan’s “billions and billions of stars.” So any new addition would have to shine brightly indeed to warrant special notice; and this, one, in my opinion, does. Very strongly recommended.
Schubert: The Four Last Quartets / Guarneri Quartet
RCA
CD
$21.99Sep 01, 2015
R E V I E W S:
"Taut, intense, and beautifully shaped, the playing conveys the music’s drama, haunting lyricism, and bold originality. Hearing it, one is led to think that Leonard Bernstein committed a major omission when he said that “alone” among all composers, Beethoven had “a direct line to God.” The eerie tremolos of No. 15 here are stunningly otherworldly; the continuity and building tension of the second-movement variations in No. 14, compelling; the bold brashness of the opening of the “Quartettsatz,” intrusively arresting. And throughout all the performances, care with balances produces a welcome clarity of voicing that underscores Schubert’s harmonic daring."
FANFARE: Mortimer H. Frank
Lovely playing, as nearly always from these artists... The Quartettsatz was written four years before the A minor Quartet. There's certainly no lack of shivers and shudders here: indeed, you get the impression that the players were deliberately saving up all their disquiet for the key of C minor. The recording quality is very natural throughout.
-- Gramophone [2/1973, reviewing the original LP release of Quartets 12 and 14]
Hans Graf will become the fifteenth Music Director of the Houston Symphony, beginning with opening night of the 200l-2002 season. He debuted with the Houston Symphony in March 2000 conducting Emanuel Ax in Adams‘ Century Rolls, with Schubert‘s The Great also on the program. A week later, he led the orchestra and Houston Symphony Chorus in an expanded weekend series of Orft‘s Carmina Burana. He made an appearance as a guest conductor with two subscription programs in May 2000.
The Austrian-born Graf is in his sixth season as Music Director of Canada‘s Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and his third season with the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine in France.
Believing “there is something to learn from musicians and orchestras everyday,“ Graf guest conducts all over the globe. In the United States, he frequently makes appearances in Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Dallas, Indianapolis and Cincinnati. He has conducted Mostly Mozart at the Lincoln Center, the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Tanglewood and the Cleveland Orchestra in Blossom Center.
Internationally, Graf often conducts in the major concert halls of Scandinavia, France, Italy, England, Japan and Australia. He has appeared with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, as well as the St. Petersburg and Israel Philharmonics. He has been part of major European festivals including Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Savonlinna (Finland‘s Opera Festival), Bregenz, Vienna and Salzburg (for thirteen successive seasons).
An opera proponent for its “wonderful musical power and sense of human expression,“ Graf first conducted the Vienna State Opera in 1981 and has since appeared at major opera houses in Berlin, Munich, Paris and Rome. His extensive opera repertory includes several premieres.
The young German baritone Konstantin Krimmel won the prestigious Preis des Deutschen Musikwettbewerbs in 2019, in addition to the Helmut Deutsch Prize. He joins Alpha for a number of recordings, starting with this programme of lieder conceived with his longstanding partner, the pianist Doriana Tchakarova. This lover of words, a particularly expressive performer in concert, wanted to 'tell a story' for his first album: he chose to record a selection of ballads, because 'they are genuine operas in just a few minutes... mini-sagas that permit great interpretative freedom'. Among the great poets present here are Schiller, Goethe and Heinrich Heine. As to the composers, alongside the indispensable Schubert and Schumann, this programme presents a great master of the genre, Carl Loewe, who wrote several hundred ballads: the works recorded here, inspired by Scots poems or Danish legends, are especially eloquent. There is also a chance to discover the much more rarely recorded Adolf Jensen, a great admirer of Wagner, whom he met in 1861: 'To translate Wagner's ideas of Beauty and Truth to smaller forms has been my aim in all my later compositions.'
While offering little suggestion of the symphonic mastery he would attain less than a decade later, the First Symphony, influenced by Mozart's last symphonies and completed in October 1813, is a remarkable achievement. Schubert composed his Third Symphony over a period of about two months, completing the work in July 1815. The Third Symphony is generally characterized by an increased rhythmic intensity, at times bordering on obsession. We may well think of Schubert primarily as a wonderful melodist, but driving, sometimes overpowering rhythm is just as strong a feature of many of his greatest works. The question of why Schubert left this B minor symphony unfinished has continued to exercise scholars. The most convincing explanation is that he simply found himself unable to continue on the same exalted level and resigned himself to leaving the symphony as it was- two movements of breathtaking quality and imagination. There is no evidence that he ever wished, in his remaining six years, to return to the work, or that he regarded it as "unfinished." Beethoven's influence on the historic development of the symphony was staggering. His own examples, widening the expressive range of the genre, opened up a new world. Against this background, Schubert conceived a work of much greater poetry, drama and profundity than he had attempted in his previous symphonies. Over-familiarity may well have blunted our appreciation of this symphony, which is strikingly original from almost every aspect. Apart from the concentrated, expressive quality, there is also an enhanced sense of tone color, with much richer sonorities, and a new spaciousness.
The Complete 1940s Studio Recordings / Wilhelm Backhaus
APR
CD
$18.99Nov 20, 2020
German pianist, Wilhelm Backhaus (1884–1969) left a 60-year recorded legacy which began in 1908, but a major turning point came in 1950 when he switched allegiance from HMV to Decca. His last HMV recordings, included in this set, are amongst his least known and it appears that those from his final HMV sessions in Zürich in 1948 are reissued here for the first time. Backhaus had settled in Switzerland in the 1930s and although he continued to perform in Germany during the war, he only made one commercial recording, for HMV’s German affiliate Electrola. This recording, of Mozart’s ‘Coronation’ concerto, came about because of celebrations to mark the composer’s 150th anniversary and the result is particularly ebullient. Backhaus plays his own cadenzas and ornaments profusely in the slow movement, something very unusual in Mozart performance of the time. This exceptionally well-filled disc also includes full documentation explaining for the first time why Backhaus became disenchanted with HMV and left them for Decca.
Schubert: Lied Edition 18 - Schiller, Vols. 3 and 4
Naxos
CD
$14.99$29.99Save 50%May 17, 2005
There are not many so-called 'standard' songs on this CD but the observant reader may already have noticed that it presents several Schiller texts in alternative settings, ranging from very early (Des Mädchens Klage D6 is Schubert's first song - bar one) to very near the end of the composer's life. It is instructive to compare and see the quite different approach to the same text at different times. Listening to Schubert songs is always life-enhancing and even if not all of them are masterpieces there are constantly interesting turns of phrase or just a beautiful melody that is a pleasure to listen to, especially when sung so well as Lothar Odinius does here. This disc is from beginning to end Schubert singing on the highest possible level.
Schubert: Complete Piano Trios Vol 1 / Vienna Piano Trio
MDG
CD
$20.99Mar 01, 2003
In their lively and robust performance of Schubert's E-flat Piano Trio the Vienna Piano Trio employs a rich, full sonority that belies the presence of "only" three instruments. This impression is aided, I suspect, by the warmly reverberant acoustic captured with remarkable fidelity by MDG's vivid recording. Throughout the performance the players effuse a marked vitality that carries the music along with seeming effortlessness. The first movement and scherzando boast infectious rhythmic energy and joyful spirits, while the lyrical Andante strides along confidently with some beautifully rendered solo passages.
But it's the Finale that takes center stage in this work, even more so in this recording as it includes the original uncut version as a bonus. Schubert made substantial excisions in this movement, shortening its length by more than five minutes. The original version's greatly expanded development features a few more rounds of the "tickling" motif (with its rapid repeated notes) that gains in importance as it now wanders through some fascinating harmonic modulations. It's a challenging bit of business to maintain those repeated notes with evenness and accuracy, and the Vienna players pull it off impressively while making the most of the music's motivic drama.
However, Schubert's shorter finale should not be discounted as it gains in clarity and balance. But such is the quality of Vienna Trio's rendition that you really don't mind hearing it play through this marvelous music twice. Enthusiastically recommended. --Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com
Schubert: Schwanengesang - Beethoven: An die ferne Geliebte / Williams, Burnside
Chandos
CD
$21.99May 01, 2020
Roderick Williams writes: “Although only twelve years separate the composition of Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte and Schubert’s Schwanengesang, the ethos and sound world of the two works are markedly different. Pairing them on the concert platform seemed an obvious choice on one hand, but I was reminded not to try to perform Beethoven in the way I perform Schubert. For one thing, the former still has the ring of the late classical, while the latter explores the darkness of the early romantic. For this reason, we decided to record the two works in slightly different soundscapes. In An die ferne Geliebte, the inventiveness of Beethoven is best expressed in the piano writing, while the vocal part is deliberately simple, strophic (the music is repeated for each stanza), and folk-like. ...the sixth song states that these songs are offered ‘ohne Kunstgepräng’. And so we have set the voice slightly more distantly in the balance, giving the piano due prominence; the effect is almost as if I were singing over Iain’s shoulder. Schwanengesang is recorded more traditionally: in these most extraordinary and progressive songs the vocal line is supported by the piano, in equal partnership. Roderick Williams.”
A Musical Zoo with Ashley Riches and Joseph Middleton is a veritable tour de force, featuring compositions spanning nearly 160 years, from Schubert’s ‘The Trout’ to Shostakovich’s ‘Once there lived a cockroach’ and four languages (German, French, Russian and English). A strong representation of the German Lieder tradition (Schubert, Schumann, Wolf, Brahms and Richard Strauss) is balanced by the French mélodie (Fauré, Ravel) and English lyricism (Ireland, Howells). We humans seem to have an endless fascination with the animal kingdom, and animals have proved an inspiration for artists, composers, and writers alike. This recital demonstrates what a rich seam this has proved for a diverse range of composers. Ashley Riches comments: ‘The text [of a song] may outline to us what we see. But the flutterings of Schubert’s Birds, the flicking antennae of Shostakovich’s Cockroach, the rush of notes with which Ravel’s Peacock spreads its tail – these are movements and energies accessible to music alone.’
Both on the concert platform and in the recording studio, pianist Daniel-Ben Pienaar is a completist. Following complete cycles of piano sonatas by Beethoven and Mozart, he presents 12 Great Piano Sonatas by Franz Schubert – the composer’s 11 finished sonatas and the seminal fragment D840. Pienaar relishes in these revelatory works, their extraordinarily detailed possibilities of characterisation, their call for immense energy and abandon, and navigating the vast dreamscapes that unfold in the course of this six-hour musical journey. “dazzling precision and clarity ... he communicates an individual and convincing vision for each piece, enough for every one of them to give delight. Brilliant.” (Gramophone, Editor’s Choice on The Long 17th Century) “dizzying virtuosity ... fresh, spontaneous, original readings that shed new light on the keyboard player’s Bible” (BBC Music Magazine on J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier)
REVIEW:
These readings for me capture the spirit of Schubert’s piano style. It is only when you set Pienaar next to the established greats that he lacks something in presence and imagination, but only by a small degree. His playing is at once natural and sympathetic, and blessedly free of artifice. It is also necessary to qualify my generalization that Pienaar’s approach is lively and alert. He recognizes the greater ambition and amplitude of the opus posthumous sonatas and changes his approach accordingly.
Sarah Maria Sun's "Killer Instincts" is an incredibly creative and colorful collection of songs about bad people doing bad things. Perhaps no longer "hip" thing to do, it is a concept album - pleasurable journey in bad people's shoes. To assemble the collection, Sarah brought together songs from a wide range of genres - classical art song and melodrama, opera, Broadway, movie soundtracks, and classic rock and pop. How can this work? In these songs, Sarah inhabits a wide range of characters, at the same displaying her amazing abilities in disparate styles. The arrangements, by Max Renne and Sarah, are as clever as the repertoire. Bernstein's virtuoso "Glitter and Be Gay" arranged for an ensemble of banjos and guitar, and his "There's a Law About Men" sung to an electronic background of the orchestral accompaniment chopped and minced with filters. Joe Walsh's rock classic "Life's Been Good" sung accompanied by just bass guitar. Tom Waits' "Just the Right Bullets" in a wild west meets surf music arrangement. Others are sung basically straight: the Schubert melodrama "Abschied von der Erde" and the first recording of Stefan Wolpe's harrowing "Hitler." And on and on. Keep an open mind and enjoy the ride!
Franz Schubert can be considered the first true composer as we understand the concept today: a musician who creates primarily in response to an inner calling, exclusively serving the beauty of the music, which is sufficient in itself. Pianist Mathieu Gaudet, for the third volume of his Complete Sonatas and Major Works for Piano series, chose to record Schubert’s wonderful Sonata No. 7 in E-flat Major, D. 568 (1817) and Sonata No. 15 in A Minor, D. 845 (1825). About the Volume II, WholeNote magazine wrote “Our world will need more Schubert like this.” Indeed.
