British pianist Daniel Tong has performed at the Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall has often been broadcast over the BBC. He has presented lecture-recitals on the Beethoven piano sonatas and is noted for performances of a wide variety of masterworks from Dvorak to Chopin to Schubert and Schumann.

Franz Schubert's solo piano music, stemming from the Viennese Classical school, shows the influences of Beethoven, Haydn and Viennese dance music while also foreshadowing at times the sparkle and lyrical facility of Chopin. Schubert's expansive later sonatas, posses an introverted, contemplative nature which author Herbert Russcol described as more suited to listening while laying on the floor of your room at 2 o'clock in the morning than in the concert hall. This fascinating variety in which moods of cheerfulness and sadness are often mixed, draws many listeners, who collect multiple performances and interpretations of the same Schubert works. - Greg La Traille, ArkivMusic

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SCHUBERT Piano Sonata No. 20 in A, D 959. Moments musicaux, D 780 • Daniel Tong (pn) • QUARTZ 28888 (75:56)

With its legacy of Curzon, Hess, and Gerald Moore, and the expatriate presence of Perahia and Brendel, England would seem to be fertile ground for Schubert piano playing of the highest order. So it is, with Imogen Cooper, Paul Lewis, and another English pianist, Daniel Tong.

Tong’s performances of Schubert’s penultimate sonata and the Moments musicaux, recorded with flattering sound by Quartz Music and accompanied by Richard Wigmore’s knowing booklet notes, achieve an unaffected feeling that results from interpretive decisions that are generally at one with the music’s natural flow and fluctuating moods. Unlike the gifted young pianist Inessa Sinkyevich, who recently issued an all-Schubert disc containing the D 959 Sonata—self-published, and more primitively recorded—Tong’s affinity for Schubert has a depth that puts these performances in the front rank.

He’s most persuasive in the most leisurely, songful music: the second and sixth of the Moments receive the finest performances here. Played straightforwardly with unwavering rhythm and flawless voicing, Tong well captures their stillness and tenderness. No. 6, the profoundest and slowest of the set is, interestingly, marked Allegretto, a cautionary communication to the pianist to maintain an underlying pulse, and Tong achieves this. Other movements, while undeniably well played, are less well characterized. No. 5 would benefit from more vehemence, a quality that doesn’t seem to be strong in Tong’s temperament, and No. 4’s careful, slow paced reading disappoints. The outer sections of the piece offer more than Bachian counterpoint, if allowed to move faster in a less literal fashion.

Like the sixth of the Moments musicaux, D 959’s long Finale is marked Allegretto. In this case, it’s an indication that the movement should feel more leisurely than an Allegro. Tong’s tempo for it is fine, but his performance comes across as careful rather than carefree. I wish that he had let the second subject move forward, rather than keeping things so metronomic. Schnabel, with his uniquely transparent-sounding accompaniments, manages to make this movement, and the whole Sonata, seem not at all long. He lets the Finale flow freely, unafraid to create a little controlled chaos and bluster along the way. No other pianist has brought Schnabel’s imaginative pacing and constant creation of changing colors to a recording of this work.

If not on Schnabel’s exalted level, Tong’s D 959 well captures the Sonata’s varied moods: the majesty and overall lyricism of the first movement, the second movement’s “ghostly barcarolle” (Schnabel’s description) with its shift to wild fantasy in its middle section, and charming lightness in the Scherzo, done, again, at a slightly relaxed tempo.

FANFARE: Paul Orgel

Schubert: Songs for Voice & Guitar

Schubert: Late Piano Works

Classical Music

Franz Schubert’s Symphony in C major very much deserves its popular designation: it is indeed “The Great.” After all, its playing length of an hour means that it transcends the dimensions of everything that came before it. Moreover, with this mighty feat Schubert was very much inviting direct comparison with the works of a certain composer who was almost thirty years his senior: Beethoven. Peter Gülke and his Brandenburg Symphony discover hidden and more obvious allusions while situating this gigantic work, complete and unabridged, in a previously hardly noticed, surprising comparative context and present the results in vibrant SACD sound. On this recording Peter Gulke once again shows why he has been showered with the highest honors in the field of music and the study of literature. Just in time for the two hundredth anniversary of the Brandenburg Theatre, he and his orchestra are in top form. In keeping with the festive occasion- and the outstanding importance of the work- Schubert’s symphony is heard in luxurious three-dimensional sound. Genuinely great music conveyed in magnificent audio form!

Classical Music

DER TOD UND DAS MADCHEN, SALVE

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]

Classical Music

Classical Music

Schubert: Piano Quintet "Trout"; Mozart: Piano Quartet in E-

DIABELLI VARIATIONEN

Classical Music

Classical Music

DEATH OF THE MAIDEN