Franz Schubert
741 products
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Schubert: Piano Sonatas D. 959 And D. 960 / Hans-Jurg Strub [2 SACDs]
Ars Produktion · Sep 2020SACD$32.99 -
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SaleSchubert: Swansong / Bliss, Bevan, Glynn, Frank-Gemmill, Tomlinson
Signum Classics · Nov 2018CD$19.99$9.99 -
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Where Only Stars Can Hear Us: Schubert Songs / Sulayman, Yi-Heng Yang
Avie Records · Mar 2020CD$19.99 -
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Schubert: Die schone Mullerin / Williams, Burnside
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REVIEW:
This is a beautiful and thoughtful account of Die schöne Müllerin. Roderick Williams’ approach is supremely intelligent and apart from the interpretative care he takes, his singing per se will give enormous pleasure.
– MusicWeb International
I Wonder As I Wander / Newby, Middleton
When deciding on the repertoire for his début disc, James Newby’s first choice fell on An die ferne Geliebte, songs that he had been performing ever since the beginning of his career. But Beethoven’s song cycle – and perhaps even more so the quasi-operatic Adelaide – also sets a tone for the entire disc, that of longing and of wanting to be elsewhere, near the distant beloved. These are emotions that Schubert, perhaps more than any other composer, has plumbed in depth, and Newby went on to select five of his songs that in various ways depict the restlessness and loneliness of the eternal wanderer. Mahler is another composer who knew something about longing – for instance that it can be deadly, which he demonstrated with his Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz, in which a soldier awaits execution after trying to desert to his homeland while the piano imitates the muffled rolling of drums. The military theme continues in the high-strung Revelge, as a young soldier marches towards his death, thinking about his sweetheart with ever-greater desperation. The final song by Mahler, Urlicht, expresses the anguish and pain of earthly life, and the longing for Heaven and, in effect, death. Framing this programme with five folk song arrangements by Benjamin Britten, James Newby and Joseph Middleton explore Man’s never-ending search (geographical or psychological) for that distant object of desire: who, what or wherever it may be.
Schubert: Music for Violin, Vol. 2 / Daskalakis, Giacometti
The extant music for violin by Franz Schubert fits comfortably on two discs, and Ariadne Daskalakis released the first disc of her survey in 2019, to critical acclaim. The disc included works for violin and piano as well as three pieces with orchestral accompaniment, in performances described in The Strad as having ‘a litheness and shimmering delight that capture the music’s innate charm and dance-like vivacity with a beguiling sureness of touch.’ The second installment focuses on the chamber music with piano, and once again Daskalakis is joined by Paolo Giacometti, playing a fortepiano by Salvatore Lagrassa. The instrument, of the Viennese school, was built around 1815 and is thus almost exactly contemporary with the sonatas recorded here, the ones in D major and A minor dating from 1816 and the Sonata in A major from the following year. Schubert, who was around 20 years old at the time, had learned the violin from an early age, but the sonatas were probably intended for his older brother Ferdinand, who led the family string quartet in which Franz played the viola. The disc opens with a later work, however – the so-called Rondeau brilliant, from 1826. As the nickname indicates, the B minor Rondo is virtuosic, composed for Josef Slavík who before his early death was hailed as Paganini’s successor by the Viennese critics. In her liner notes, Ariadne Daskalakis describes the piece as ‘in turn dramatic, playful, gentle, seductive and wild’ and together with Paolo Giacometti she brings out each of these aspects.
PIANO WORKS
Schubert: Piano Sonatas D. 959 And D. 960 / Hans-Jurg Strub [2 SACDs]
Trios for Violin, Cello & Harp / Bareil, Tetreault, Milot
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REVIEWS:
Focused primarily on French music from the first half of the 20th century, this album reveals the subtle blend of sonorities formed by the harp, cello, and violin through the trios of Jacques Ibert and Henriette Renié. The exploration of this period continues with Danse des lutins, an acrobatic work for harp by Renié. Violinist Antoine Bareil and Cellist Stéphane Tétreault then perform the dazzling Passacaglia by Handel/Halvorsen, before harpist Valérie Milot re-joins the trio for a sweet, introspective finale in the form of a Schubert lied arranged for these forces.
– WFMT 98.7FM (Chicago, IL)
The Ibert trio, beautifully crafted, entertaining, light but not superficial, is an equally apt description of the ensemble itself. Written during wartime, it features an ethereal opening Allegro, a quite beautiful Andante and rather unusually, a Scherzo(ando) to finish, which is motoric and virtuosic.
The work for trio by the little-known Henriette Renié is a most pleasant surprise; it's well sustained in its invention, with considerable passion and drama considering the lack of presence of a piano. It is undeniably French, but it has an unexpected Germanic strength to it.
– MusicWeb International
Schubert: Swansong / Bliss, Bevan, Glynn, Frank-Gemmill, Tomlinson
Christopher Glynn continues his series of late Schubert song cycles in English, joined by celebrated soloists Sir John Tomlinson, Sophie Bevan, Julian Bliss and Alec Frank-Gemmill. Titled by the works first published following Schubert’s death, ‘Swansong’ D 957 sets the words of poets Ludwig Rellstab, Heinrich Heine and Johann Gabriel Seidl in songs that cover a variety of different emotional states. The lighthearted ‘Love Message’ with its rippling accompaniment, addresses a murmuring brook with the hope of true love. The bone- chilling ‘Doppelganger’ with its stark, slowly tolling chords, finds the protagonist crazed with a nocturnal vision of himself agonizing at the empty doorstep of his lost love. Renowned for his clear diction and powerful voice, Sir John Tomlinson brings his insight and nuance to these profound works. Reminiscent of the scoring for The Shepherd on the Rock and composed in the same year, ‘On the River’ combines soprano, clarinet and horn in a setting of a poem by Ludwig Rellstab. Originally given to Beethoven who did not live long enough to set it, Schubert took up the words in a work that is a subtle homage to the composer. The 1828 work The Shepherd on the Rock sets words by Wilhelm Muller and German playwright Helmina von Chezy, and was composed in gratitude to the soprano Anna Milder-Hauptmann. Here performed by Sophie Bevan and Julian Bliss, it tells the story of a shepherd lamenting the distance between him and his beloved before a reflection on loneliness and grief. The final section celebrates the arrival of spring in a hopeful conclusion.
Schubert: Schwanengesang / Rutherford, Asti
That is not the only point of textual interest in this Schwanengesang. In preparing the work baritone James Rutherford and pianist Eugene Asti had to decide what keys to put these (originally high voice) songs in, and decided to put every song down a minor third, preserving the key relations at least. They even claim this might be the first time on disc this has been done (but one would need to listen to an awful lot of recordings to be quite sure). Of course this deepens and darkens the songs, which suits some more than others, the heavier songs like Der Atlas and Die Stadt tending to sound very imposing in these keys. And although BIS describe Rutherford as a baritone, he sounds more of a bass-baritone here. But then he has sung Hans Sachs at Bayreuth and Vienna, and the cast list in my score of Die Meistersinger says simply “Hans Sachs – Bass”.
The opening song Liebesbotschaft lacks a certain tripping lightness, but the next one Kreigers Ahnung suits Rutherford’s very fine voice perfectly, and one notices his impeccable German diction from the start. The third song, Frühlingssehnsucht shows that his large voice can deploy a lighter manner, and he really relishes the text. Ständchen, is the best known of all these songs and benefits here from a restrained but still ardent treatment. Following Aufenthalt with Herbst feels slightly like viewing a sketch after the finished painting, but both songs are so well done it seems churlish to complain. With the long (six minutes), slow and anguished In der Ferne the low voice makes its mark, as does the pianist in Abschied, with just the right tempo - a canter, not a gallop, that allows the singer to articulate the text. The performance of the Heine songs in the second part are if anything even more successful than the Rellstab ones, reaching a powerful climax with the rising hysteria of Der Dopplegänger. A properly charming account of the last song Schubert ever wrote, Die Taubenpost, closes a very satisfying version of Schwanengesang.
The four extra songs filling the disc are all favourites, and all are well sung and played. The SACD sound is excellent, and the useful booklet notes are by the distinguished American Schubert scholar Susan Youens, no less. But of course Schwanengesang is the main thing, and there are many fine accounts to choose from. If you want Herbst embedded in the cycle, and in a really fine performance, then it is included by Goerne in both of his splendid versions (Decca and Harmonia Mundi), and by Schreier (Decca), but Fischer-Dieskau (DG), Bostridge (Warner), and Gerhaher (Arte Nova) omit it. Of the few women to record the cycle, Fassbaender (DG) has it in but Stutzman (Erato) does not. The best solution might be that of Holzmair (Decca) and Pregardien (Challenge) who add it to the CD as an extra, but not within the cycle, which also happens on the last volume (No.37) of the Hyperion/Graham Johnson version. That has the two parts of the cycle shared between two tenors, John Mark Ainsley and Anthony Rolfe Johnson. There are now so many good recordings of this cycle – all of those mentioned above are worth hearing, and several are worth owning. Goerne on Decca (live, with Brendel) is still my choice of the lower voice options, and Bostridge among the tenors. Fassbaender’s disc is a quite exceptional performance. But the long list of those worth really hearing now includes this fine version too.
– MusicWeb International (Roy Westbrook)
SCHUBERT
Schubert: String Quartets Nos. 14 & 9 / Chiaroscuro Quartet

One of the truly iconic works in the repertoire for string quartet, Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden is named after the song which has lent its theme to the second movement. At the end of Matthias Claudius’s poem, which Schubert had set as a 20-year-old in 1817, Death cradles the Maiden in his bony embrace. And her fear, in the first verse, of encountering his tomb-cold touch is mirrored by his desire for her in the second. In Schubert’s lifetime, death was a constant presence in everyday life and even a young person like himself would have encountered it at close quarters – in fact, his own mother had passed away when he was only 15. When Schubert returns to the song in 1824 and starts work on the string quartet, death has nevertheless grown even more real: in the meantime he has become acquainted with pain and disease during the bouts of the syphilis that he knows will kill him. He turns the song into a set of variations, preceding it with a ferocious Allegro, and following it with a Scherzo and a Finale that have been described as ‘the dance of the demon fiddler’ and ‘a dance with death’. The acclaimed Chiaroscuro Quartet performs the work on gut strings, which brings out the vulnerability and desperation even further. The players then let us down gently with the youthful String Quartet No.?9 in G minor, a work in which the minor key offers Schubert the opportunity to play with light and shadows, rather than full-scale drama.
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REVIEWS:
With their ‘period’ sound world (gut strings, Classical bows, sharp articulation) allied to hungry tempos and phrasing that vaults across the bar line, Schubert’s darkest quartet seems more than ever a study in the inexorable power of rhythm. Their unvarnished sonorities (vibrato minimal or non-existent) make Schubert’s harmonic clashes all the more excruciating. It is also, properly, a drama of uncomfortable extremes.
– Gramophone
Light and shade abound in performances of brisk, fierce beauty.
– The Strad
SAKONTOLA
Where Only Stars Can Hear Us: Schubert Songs / Sulayman, Yi-Heng Yang
In life and music, Grammy Award-winning tenor Karim Sulayman is a master storyteller. Where Only Stars Can Hear Us is a journey through the songs of Franz Schubert, a composer who was able to capture joy and sorrow in a single moment like no other. Karim’s voyage traverses themes of darkness and yearning, guided throughout by moonbeams and shining stars. His partner is historical keyboardist Yi-heng Yang who plays on a fortepiano built by Joseph Simon in Vienna in 1830, adding an air of authenticity from Schubert’s time. “lucid, velvety tenor and pop-star charisma” (BBC Music Magazine) “a pianist of “astonishing skill and vividness” (The New York Times)
REVIEWS:
Sulayman is always engaging, with an appealing honesty to his approach and a vividness to his storytelling. His light, silvery tenor is in many ways suited to much of the programme’s theme, but the flipside is a paleness and shortness of sap and sweetness; nor does the tenor’s German always feel entirely natural. Adjust to the tone, though, and there’s still a great deal to enjoy in these performances.
– Gramophone
This Schubert has its priorities straight. Text comes first in Sulayman's interpretations. The small inflections in his timbre convey textual themes equally well to audiences of all German-speaking levels. From the seemingly bratty child in Erlkönig (RIP), to the poignantly longing fisherman of Des fischers Liebesglück, he is an actor first.
His voice is clear and transparent. He barely covers his sound, allowing every ounce of that underlying emotion to shine through.
Both performers treat these lieder as chamber music. It's unclear who leads the stretches that come so often throughout the album, but whenever one part pushes, the other follows. Yang's slightly delayed cadences gain weight with a quick breath from Sulayman. Sulayman stretches a phrase climax, Yang rolls a chord to help accent. The two work symbiotically, melding the intense drama from each of their parts into a composite, deeply affecting pathos.
– Classical Music Geek
Schubert: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 4
Song's First Cycle / Tritschler, Martineau
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REVIEW:
Tritschler sings his programme as eloquently as he writes about it. Pride of place inevitably goes to the Beethoven, where he combines something of Fritz Wunderlich’s warmth with Christian Gerhaher’s altogether darker introspection, and is beautifully alert to the cycle’s constant shifts of emotion and mood. He and Martineau, meanwhile, very much form an equal partnership, and you get a real sense of almost instinctive give and take between them.
–Gramophone
Romance / Lang Lang
Portrait / Hélène Boschi
Hélène Boschi’s repertoire was broad-based, ranging from the Baroque (François Couperin, Jean Philippe Rameau, Johann Sebastian Bach) to contemporary music. Her favorite composers of the Viennese Classical era were undoubtedly Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Schubert; strangely, it seems she left behind no Beethoven recordings. One notable fact about Boschi is that she was the first female pianist to record the works of Padre Antonio Soler (1729-1783), receiving the 1952 Grand Prix du Disque in honor of her achievement. As for the nineteenth century, her passionate readings of Schumann are of the utmost importance; but Carl Maria von Weber and Muzio Clementi also captured her attention, as did Frédéric Chopin and Emmanuel Chabrier and the Impressionists Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Modern classics were also integral to her repertoire – as were the works of her immediate contemporaries. Luigi Dallapiccola dedicated his 1952 piano composition Quaderno di Annalibera to Hélène Boschi, Claude Ballif paid her that honor with his Fourth Sonata op. 31
Schubert: Music for Violin, Vol. 1 / Willens, Kölner Akademie
Violin music isn’t what one normally associates with Franz Schubert, but he did in fact receive his first violin lessons as a young boy from his father. At the age of 11 he was accepted as a member of the choir of the imperial court chapel, and as such became a pupil at the Stadtkonvikt school. There he joined the excellent student orchestra, eventually assuming the role of leader. Among his examiners was the court Kapellmeister Anton Salieri, who took a keen interest in Schubert’s compositions. Schubert left the school in 1813, but continued working with Salieri for a few years longer, possibly on some of the pieces recorded here – the Rondo, Konzertstuck and G minor Sonata all hail from 1816 while the Polonaise is from the following year. These early, unpretentious violin compositions were probably intended for Schubert’s older brother Ferdinand, who led the family string quartet in which Franz played the viola. Composed in 1827, when Schubert had already written his symphonies, string quartets, piano sonatas and hundreds of songs, the closing Fantasy in C major is another matter. A substantial piece in four sections, it contains challenging writing for both instruments, demonstrating what a master Schubert himself was on both. On this and its soon-to-be-released companion disc, Ariadne Daskalakis has gathered all of Schubert’s works for violin. Equally at home on baroque and modern instruments, she has chosen to perform them in a historical context, joined by Paolo Giacometti on a fortepiano by Salvatore Lagrassa from c. 1815 and the period band Die Kolner Akademie conducted by Michael Alexander Willens.
SYMPHONY N.9 SYMPHONY NO.38
Schubert: Piano Works
Schubert: Symphonies, Vol. 2
Edward Gardner leads the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Schubert’s Symphonies Nos. 2 and 6 in this second volume in the acclaimed series. Chief Conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra since October 2015, Edward Gardner has led the musicians on multiple international tours, which have included performances in Berlin, Munich, and Amsterdam, and at the BBC Proms and Edinburgh International Festival. He was recently appointed Principal Conductor Designate of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, his tenure commencing in September 2021. In demand as a guest conductor, during the previous two seasons he made his debut with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, and Wiener Symphoniker, as well as at The Royal Opera, Covent Garden in a new production of Káťa Kabanová, praised by The Guardianas a ‘magnificent interpretation’. He returned to the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Philharmonia Orchestra, and Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano. In April 2019, he conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Lincoln Center in New York.