Both works are a legacy. Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata is the only document that such an instrument existed, no longer exists today and has been replaced by a viola or cello. Shostakovich's Viola Sonata is his last work; he died a few days later. A legacy of his thoughts and musical explorations, one of his most famous works. Andreas Willwohl travels as a soloist with his viola, but is also a member of the highly acclaimed Mandelring Quartet. Daniel Heide is certainly very famous as a partner to various singers, but also as a chamber musician.
What does the German word Heimat mean? The place of one's birth, a place of initial socialisation, or a feeling of security and belonging? Many composers made the city of Vienna their Heimat. Beethoven, Schubert, Ernst, Vorisek and Mozart - all represented on this recording - were shaped by it's rich traditions and contributed to the style that we now call Viennese Classicism. The Austrian capital has always been a centre for the arts, and music in particular. It attracts creative minds and artists and is the embodiment of a bridge between tradition and modernity. This recording aims to take the listener on a journey of discovery through a pivotal period around the year 1800, in the form of a spontaneous and intimate chamber music concert. It combines masterpieces of the duo repertoire for violin and piano with little-known gems such as Vorisek's Sonata in G major.
Masako Ohta chooses a haiku by Matsuo Basho as the motto for her musical garden: For a while moonlit night over flowers. Ohta opens with "In a landscape" by John Cage and leads over to "Clair de lune" by Claude Debussy with the Intermezzo, Nº 2, A major by Johannes Brahms. Pattern B "Yabe" from Patterns of Plants by Japanese composer Mamoru Fujieda is just as much a part of her journey into the infinite nature of sounds as Fumio Yasuda's "Rain Forrest" and "Souvenir from Japan, Sakura for Piano" by Toshio Hosokawa. Masako Ohta combines classical music from Schubert, Mozart, Chopin and Zimmermann with contemporary Japanese sounds to create a poetic work of fine and sensitive timbres. With "My Music Garten", Masako Ohta releases her third piano solo album on Winter & Winter. For the recordings, Ohta retreated to a solitary forest house in the Bavarian Forest, far away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, to be inspired by silence and nature. This album is the result of her intensive study of poetry, sound and music from her native Japan and her adopted home in the West. Masako Ohta lives in Munich and performs all over the world, often in collaboration with actors, dancers, poets and visual artists.
Tae-Hyung Kim's Echoes in the Mists is a poetic journey through a century of piano music, tracing a line from early Romanticism to early modernism. The album opens with Franz Liszt's masterful transcriptions of Schubert's Lieder-works that preserve the songs' lyrical intimacy while expanding their expressive possibilities on the piano. These include Fruhlingsglaube, Standchen von Shakespeare, and excerpts from Die schone Mullerin, where Liszt illuminates Schubert's emotional worlds with subtle pianistic colour and occasional virtuosic flourish. At the heart of the programme lies Robert Schumann's Waldszenen, a deeply introspective cycle in which nine miniature scenes form an imaginative, poetic walk through an inner forest-alternating between joy, mystery, tenderness, and melancholy. Through this selection, Kim highlights the richly interconnected sound worlds of Schubert, Schumann, and Liszt, revealing both continuity and evolution within the Romantic tradition. The album's second half turns toward a different aesthetic with Leos Janacek's V mlhach (In the Mists), written in 1912, a work shaped by personal grief and the composer's late-style search for distilled expression. It's four movements form a single, mist-shrouded psychological landscape, where fragmentary motives, speech-like rhythms, and shifting tonal colours create a fragile, introspective atmosphere. While faint traces of Debussy's influence may be heard-particularly in the luminous openings and closings-the music remains unmistakably Janacek's in it's tension, fatalism, and emotional immediacy. By juxtaposing these radically different composers, Kim creates an album that reflects the transformation of piano writing from Romantic lyricism to early modern expression, inviting listeners to hear how echoes of the past resonate through changing musical languages.
The Katok Ensemble was formed in 2019 by Paul Serri. For their first album "Le Temps suspendu" (Suspended Time), they have taken up the challenge of bringing together on a double CD Beethoven's String Quartet No 15 and Schubert's Quintet for Two Cellos. These two works complement each other in so many respects and heralded the Romantic Era which would follow. The recording made at the Katok Festival in Ardeche enables us to hear them from a fresh perspective.
Reger, Schubert & R. Schumann: ...so tief in Abendrot (Romantic Songs) / Wünsch
Haenssler Classic
CD
$20.99Jan 05, 2024
Inspired by Franz Schubert's late lieder compositions and works by Johannes Brahms, among others, in which voice and piano are enhanced by another melody instrument, we have taken a completely new approach to our lieder recital repertoire. The result can now be heard on this CD: Songs of the Romantic period, freshly arranged for soprano, violoncello and piano.
In art songs, as in chamber music in general, there are often concealed lines within the piano movements which gain greatly in expression through the accompaniment of a solo instrument. For this reason, we feel that our combination of voice, piano and melody instrument is particularly effective and has an enriching effect on the listening experience of the art songs presented here. The contrasting registers of soprano and cello complement both the music and the substance of the text from different angles, the timbre of the cello being ideal for the hues and shades of these songs as its solo role augments these delicate arrangements. The work"Auf dem Strom" by Franz Schubert - also on this CD - is one of the best-known original compositions of this genre.
Bach, Brahms, Haydn, Schubert & R. Schumann: My Choice
Winter & Winter
CD
$20.99May 06, 2022
The immediacy and power of La Gaia Scienza and Paolo Beschi takes your breath away. The sound of these outstanding musicians on original instruments is amazing and appealing, the phrasing and the interaction are exemplary, every note and every bar has been rethought. Chamber music full of contrasts and emotions. Adventurous souls should not hesitate, key works by Brahms, Haydn, Schubert and Schumann have never been heard like this before and as a special encore, highlights from Bach's Cello Solo Suites can be heard. Paolo Beschi (co-founder and cellist of "Il Giardino Armonico") conducts the ensemble "La Gaia Scienza" with pianist Federica Valli and violinist Stefano Barneschi. This group gives the world groundbreaking reinterpretations of romantic and baroque works. Pizzicato writes: "played vitally and pulsating, with feeling but without pathos."
Martin Helmchen embarks on a complete recording of Schubert's piano sonatas, with four double albums to be released between now and 2028, the bicentenary of the composer's death. He has waited until he was in his forties to embark on this adventure because, in his view, an artist needs maturity to meet the challenges posed by the radical contrasts in Schubert's sonatas: "constant virtuosity that is never needlessly complex, set against sober interiority, the exuberant joy of the Landler, and bouts of dramatic madness". Recording a complete body of work also meant studying the scores carefully and tackling the question of the movements left unfinished by the composer, should we stop at the precise point where Schubert stopped composing simply because Schubert either ran out of time or did not have enough money to buy music manuscript paper? Helmchen has chosen to complete these movements, inspired by the recordings and above all the analyses of the eminent pianist Paul Badura-Skoda. This first volume presents sonatas composed between 1815 (Schubert was 18) and 1825. The entire cycle has been recorded on a Bosendorfer piano at the Kronberg Academy.
Entitled Vienna Evenings, this recording contains music linked to the imperial city and the piano, and to the enviable bourgeois musical culture of these time periods. The album features Schubert's piano pieces, the waltzes of Liszt and Schubert, and the waltzes of Johann Strauss re-imagined for the piano. Gábor Farkas received his MA and doctorate at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. Zoltán Kocsis was his master-teacher. After the academy he studied at the International Piano Academy, Lake Como, Italy, with William Grant Naboré. In 2015 he won the Grand Prix of the competition announced by the New York Concert Artist & Associates, as a result of which he could debut in Carnegie Hall in 2016.
Schubert on Violin: Works for Violin & Piano / Pusker, Fejérvári
Hungaroton
CD
$26.99Apr 15, 2022
The backbones of the present recording are Schubert’s two late violin-piano compositions: the Rondo in B minor and the Fantasia in C major, both commissioned by virtuoso Czech violinist Josef Slavík. Particularly interesting is the fact, that the violin-piano paraphrase of the song Sei mir gegrüsst is performed twice: once as a variation section of the Fantasia, once in H. Sitt's arrangement. Violinist Júlia Pusker is an established young musician who made it into the final of the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2019. Her partner here is Zoltán Fejérvári, Junior Prima Prize-winning pianist, winner of the 2017 Montreal International Piano Competition.
With this new B Records disc, the Miroirs Étendus company revisits one of the greatest classics of the Lieder repertoire, questioning the interpretative heritage that has long been associated with it. Pianist and artistic director Romain Louveau, baritone Jean-Christophe Lanièce and soprano Victoire Bunel propose a multi-voiced Winterreise that disembodies the overused figure of the Wanderer and favors the autonomy of Wilhelm Müller's poems. Like the Schubertian motifs that seem to appear of their own accord, only to eclipse themselves, the musicians venture a depersonalized interpretation that places the figure of the stranger at the center of this lyrical spectacle.
Sandrine Piau admits that she has always been fascinated not only by Schubert's music but also by the genre of the string quartet. "The endless quest for the pure gesture in which we lose ourselves in order to become one with each other reminds me of the aquatic ballets in old-fashioned musicals, when female swimmers formed images of perfect flowers". Thanks to the Psophos Quartet, her dream has now been realised; together they present a magnificent programme of transcriptions. "Between the hair of the bows and the texture of the voice, our instruments blend and form an imaginary Schubert quintet".
Themes of art song, poetry, and spirituality run throughout Poème Mystique, the second solo album by Korean-American violinist Danbi Um. Following Danbi’s acclaimed solo debut album Much Ado – a showcase for her virtuosity and gilded tone – Poème Mystique explores works of lyrical beauty and profound personal expression. Richard Strauss’ Violin Sonata, written in the year he met his future wife, is imbued with romance and intimacy. Ernest Bloch’s Second Violin Sonata, the title work of the album, is by turns ecstatic, spiritual, and fantasy-like. Inspired by a dream, Bloch incorporates a vast range of spirituality, including motifs from his Jewish-themed works, the Gregorian Credo, Mass Kyrie, and traditional Amen. Danbi weaves two shorter works amongst the sonatas. Gabriel Fauré’s Après un rêve (“After a dream”), originally a French art song, becomes an exquisite song without words in this transcription for violin. The album concludes with Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria, likewise originally for voice and piano, presented here in an arrangement by August Wilhelm. Danbi’s refined collaborator is Finnish pianist Juho Pohjonen. Together they deliver a performance that is at once technically virtuosic and emotionally nuanced.
Schubert: Lieder with Orchestra / Appl, Jockel, Munich Radio Orchestra
BR Klassik
CD
$19.99Oct 06, 2023
Time and again, composers – well-known and lesser-known – have arranged Franz Schubert's piano songs for orchestra. These versions are not in any way intended to cast doubt upon the powerful quality of the originals, they merely place them in a different light, and/or attempt to make them easier to perform on a larger scale – when an art song cannot be performed in an intimate salon or chamber music hall, it can also make an impact in a large concert hall.
Baritone Benjamin Appl has compiled nineteen such arrangements from the 19th and 20th centuries for this new CD from BR-KLASSIK. The Münchner Rundfunkorchester, conducted by Oscar Jockel, provides accompaniment that is subtle and in keeping with the work. The album is ultimately rounded off by the first recording of Johann von Herbeck’s orchestrations of Schubert's dances, thus establishing a connection between folk music and Schubert's art songs.
Benjamin Appl met Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag in 2019 and has worked with him ever since. 'He has shaped me both as a musician and as a human being, perhaps more than anyone else,' says Appl. This album alternates Romantic German lieder by Schubert and Brahms with vocal pieces by Kurtag, five of which are world premiere recordings. Kurtag himself is at the piano for two of the songs by Schubert and Brahms; while the German baritone's old and trusted friends Pierre-Laurent Aimard and James Baillieu join him for the other works in this programme, all under the artistic direction of Kurtag, ending with a fascinating recorded interview with Gyuri bacsi ('Uncle George') by Benjamin Appl, who tells us: 'My aim in this album is to give listeners a glimpse into the infinite universe of Gyorgy Kurtag, a shy procrastinator, stern self-critic, hesitant researcher, introverted questioner, unpretentious intellectual, brilliant composer and an extraordinary human being.'
Schubert: String Quintet / van der Heijden, Brodsky Quartet
Chandos
CD
$21.99Oct 07, 2022
Celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 2022, the Brodsky Quartet has performed more than 3000 concerts on the major concert stages of the world and has released more than seventy recordings. A natural curiosity and insatiable desire to explore have propelled the group in many artistic directions and continue to ensure it not only a place at the very forefront of the international chamber music scene but also a rich and varied musical existence. As they comment in their booklet note: ‘It seems fitting to mark the milestone by recording this epic and most celebrated of chamber works, Schubert’s String Quintet in C major, a piece which we have lived with since childhood, and which we have played with a long line of illustrious cellists. One of our earliest performances took place with Terence Weil, our mentor at college, at his retirement concert, just as we were starting out on our professional journey. Now the wonderful young Laura van der Heijden, who comes to this recording with a maturity which belies her years, represents with respect to us a similar age gap, proving that age is insignificant where there is a meeting of musical minds. Now we look forward to whatever our sixth decade might bring.’
REVIEW:
In this exceptional interpretation of Schubert’s C major Quintet, there are plenty of moments where the players individually or collectively make something happen – a tiny inflection in the phrasing here, an applied touch of color there. Yet nothing is overdone, and the music always flows as it wants to.
Brahms, Schumann & Schubert: Original Transcriptions for Tru
Delos
CD
$20.99Jan 24, 2025
Trumpet was meant to have a bright future after Handel and Bach, but history decided otherwise. Relegated to a military signal role with timpani, it had to wait until the later Romantic period to flourish once again. A brainchild of Andrew Balio, this album showcases his own transcriptions of works from the golden age of chamber music, inviting trumpeters out of the cold and into the cozy world of Brahms, Schumann, and Schubert. Pianist John Wilson partners Andrew for these new arrangements of Brahms's clarinet sonatas, Schumann's Adagio and Allegro, and Marchenbilder, and Schubert's lied 'Auf dem Strom', in which tenor Nicholas Phan gives voice to the text. Thanks to Andrew, trumpeters and music lovers can now enjoy an expanded repertoire which invites us into an entirely new soundworld.
Franz Schubert's so-called "Arpeggione Sonata" owes its peculiar name to a long-forgotten string instrument that was usually referred to in Vienna in the 1820s as the "bowed guitar" or "guitar-violoncello". It was an invention of the Viennese instrument maker Georg Stauffer and was quite popular for about a decade. After that, it disappeared into the annals of history. If Schubert had not dedicated his famous sonata to the instrument, the arpeggione would have been long forgotten. But this way, the memory of the instrument was kept alive, albeit often in name only. On this album, we hear the intended instrument.
To complement the great "Arpeggione Sonata", soloist Lorenz Duftschmid has recorded five Schubert songs in instrumental versions (the poems in question are recited before the instrumental version in each case) as well as three nocturnes by an almost forgotten Romantic from the Rhineland: Friedrich Burgmüller. His "Trois Nocturnes", available in versions, sound most beautiful and full of emotion on arpeggione and guitar, the two instruments so closely related.
Bulgarian-born pianist Kristina Marinova harnesses the healing powers of emotional melodies on LOVES ME NOT, a curated selection of soulful classical piano pieces spanning three centuries, from Bach to Rachmaninoff. Within the album’s tracklist lies an impressive range of works and composers: Gluck, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, Scriabin, Tarrega and Satie, to name a few. The compositions are united by their melancholic themes (often sparked by biographical calamity), but like an acorn that falls from the crown of a tree, they bear within themselves a seed of hope, a new beginning.
This selection of transcriptions celebrates childhood in a variety of ways, featuring popular works – Schubert’s Erlkönig, Granados’s atmospheric Tales of Youth, Mozart’s elegant Sonata facile, Schumann’s Scenes of Childhood and Debussy’s Children’s Corner – presented in a totally natural and idiomatic manner within the guitar’s distinctly expressive soundworld.
