SCHUBERT: SONGS, VOL. 3 / IAN

FANTASIES

PIANO SONATA NO 21 IN B FLAT / WANDERER FANTASY

A previously-unreleased live recording of Claudio Abbado conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in 1971 is out now on DG. Discovered in the archives of Austrian Radio - the ORF, Abbado Rediscovered features Abbado conducting the Vienna Philharmonic shortly after Karajan invited him to conduct the orchestra for the first time in 1965. Featuring Schubert's "Unfinished" and Fifth Symphonies, the recording lay untouched in the corporation's archives until now.

2019 release. In the latest chapter in Andr�s 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. Schiff again chooses to use his fortepiano made by Franz Brodmann in Vienna, around 1820. "It is to me ideally suited to Schubert's keyboard works," he has said. There is something quintessentially Viennese in it's timbre, it's tender mellowness, it's melancholic cantabilit�." Critics have agreed, unanimous also in their praise of Schiff s interpretations: "I cannot think of anyone of his calibre who has mastered the fortepiano as well as the modern piano and shown such distinction on both," wrote Stephen Plaistow in an Editor's Choice review in Gramophone. "In Schubert Schiff has a claim to be considered sovereign among today's players, carrying forward the reading and interpretation of him into areas that others have not fully explored."

PIANO QUINTET IN A D.667: THE TROUT / STRING QUART

Third volume of Franz Schubert's complete piano sonatas, performed by Japanese fortepianist Yasuyo Yano, professor at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences. Recorder in Swizerland with a Christopher Clarke fortepiano. Yasuyo Yano, was born in Tokyo. Her teachers were Midori Matsubara, then Sergio Perticaroli and Carla Giudici at the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Yasuyo Yano has also received precious advice from other famous pianists, such as Jacques Rouvier, Dang Thai Son and Paul Badura-Skoda. Yasuyo Yano now lives in Switzerland where she teaches the piano, Fortepiano and chamber music at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. She gives solo recitals and is also a chamber music performer, both on the Fortepiano and the modern piano. Yasuyo Yano tells of her encounter with the Fortepiano: "In Venice, in 2001, I played the complete Mozart sonatas for violin and piano together with the violinist Giuliano Carmignola. Andrea Marcon, another eminent Italian musician, told me after one of these concerts that I should consider playing Fortepiano. I took his advice and I am today still thankful for it, because working with the Fortepiano has opened up entirely new dimensions for me. On the one hand, the Fortepiano enables me to imagine and hear how the music must have sounded back in those days, and on the other hand, the Fortepiano is quite different to modern pianos, offering a large spectrum for creative leeway with a rich palette of sound colors, a wide range of dynamics and the delicate response of the keyboard to touch. I had not expected all of this! But it was quite a long journey to master the instrument so that I was able to reveal these characteristics - a journey with a wonderful reward as it has lead me to Schubert."

Whether you know these sonatas well or are totally unfamiliar with them, you owe it to yourself to hear this set. Schubert playing like this is rare. In July/August I reviewed two recent Schubert discs by Stephen Hough and Malcolm Bilson. Both were well played and well recorded. But I now feel constrained to add that in spite of their many individual virtues as Schubert interpreters, they are light years removed from Damgaard. This set (with it's magisterial playing and even better sound) will surely be my Record of the Year". I am grateful to the editor for bringing it to my attention. If I can bring it to the attention of others, I will have done some good in the world." American Record Guide November/December 1999

For generations, the noble family of the House of Szechenyi have played a decisive role in shaping Hungary's destiny. Katharina Ruckgaber and Tamas Egresi, accompanied by Helmut Deutsch, have compiled a representative selection of songs from the large repertoire of poems and compositions; an impressive testimony to the wide-ranging interests and talents of one of Europe's most important aristocratic families.

Classical Music

Schubert called Winterreise a cycle of "truly terrible songs," not only for it's immersive and dark subject matter but also for the compositional process itself. It is the Mount Everest of Song cycles, a form that Schubert himself perfected. Written on poems by Wilhelm Muller (1794-1827), the songs describe a timeless tale of heartbreak: boy meets girl, girl rejects boy, boy is overcome by existential feelings and sets out on a solitary winter's journey that may result in his demise. But Schubert's genius would not allow him to be content with vapid superficialities: when Schubert set these poems to music, he was confronting his own probable fate, one of agonizing pain and isolation. An unforgettable journey through one of the most powerful musical depictions of desolation Winterreise was originally composed for the tenor voice, but it has been frequently transposed to accommodate the whole gamut of vocal tessituras. Danish bass-baritone and musical scholar Jakob Bloch Jespersen has mastered a range of repertoire from Schutz to Schierbecks and well into the 21st century. His burnished resonance and restrained sensitivity well serve this existential Schubertiade. His partner, fortepianist Sharon Prushansky brings her expertise in music of the Classical and early Romantic eras, utilizing the full panoply of pianistic Affekt available to her on Robert Brown's 2015 instrument after an original by Jakob Bertsche (ca. 1810-1815). Particularly noteworthy to this instrument are it's six pedals, which serve the purpose of changing the quality and colour of the sound, including the infamous "bassoon stop!" A third, silent partner also contributes to this extraordinary production: the haunting, sepia-toned landscapes by the great Danish photographer, Tove Kurtzweil. Together, Jakob Bloch Jespersen and Sharon Prushansky take you on an unforgettable journey through one of the most powerful musical depictions of desolation this side of Mahler!

Kristjan Randalu reimagines Schubert's Winterreise with a unique blend of classical and jazz influences. Collaborating with Estonian-American bassoonist Martin Kuuskmann, the duo creates a distinct sound through the combination of piano and bassoon, offering a completely new sonic landscape for Schubert's work. This innovative reinterpretation brings a dynamic and expressive twist to the original, blending emotion and spontaneity in a fascinating way.

In mid-1941 Toscanini temporarily fell out with the NBC Symphony Orchestra management, and during the following season directed the Philadelphia Orchestra in a number of concerts. Some of the items he conducted were also recorded by RCA over several sessions, but various technical disasters left the metal masters with heavy surface noise and a barrage of clicks and pops. Nothing could be done to salvage the situation at the time, but later technology opened up possibilities and in 1963 the Schubert Ninth Symphony was published. In 1977 the whole Philadelphia series finally saw the light of day on five LPs (nla), but some allowance had then to be made for the recording quality. Further technological miracles have taken place and as a result all the performances have emerged on CD with remarkably improved sound. In fact, the recordings now seem very good indeed for their date, and RCA are therefore in a sense justified in leaving the troubled history of the enterprise out of their accompanying notes.

...Toscanini re-recorded all the Philadelphia items with the NBC orchestra, but later versions do not all show gain. Neither the 1947 nor the 1953 recordings of Schubert's Ninth Symphony can hold a candle to his Philadelphia version, where there is infinitely more subtlety of phrase and rubato and generally a more sympathetic response. This is not a Viennese-style performance, but it shows remarkable sensibility.

...The Philadelphia Orchestra of 1941 was very much a Stokowski-trained instrument, and possessed more tonal colour and warmth than the New York, NBC and BBC orchestras with which Toscanini made most of his recordings. These performances tend to show a different aspect of the great conductor, one where he sometimes responds in a slightly more yielding fashion to the character of the orchestra and to the acoustic of Philadelphia's Academy of Music, which was softer than Toscanini's usual New York venues.

-- Gramophone [6/1991]

This selection includes an interview disc with Günter Wand (Serving Music With Devotion) recorded in August 2001.

After A Soprano's Schubertiade (BIS-2343) and Elysium (BIS-2573), Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton present a new recital devoted to Schubert's songs on the theme of the changing seasons. While there have also been other successful celebrations of the four seasons in music, Franz Schubert, a lover of nature, here evokes them in his lieder. Winter, imbued with nostalgia, is represented here by three songs in which the Schubertian hero sings of lost love. But gloomy thoughts soon give way to spring, synonymous with optimism and hope as nature returns to life: 'Welcome, with your happy swarm of newly awakened creatures around me.' If life is in full swing during the summer, the hero now seems uncertain about the happy outcome of his quest for love. In autumn, evoked here by six songs, the hero can only acknowledge his failure, reflected by nature preparing for a months-long sleep: 'Ah, as the stars disappear in the sky, so does life's hope fade away.' Clarinettist Michael Collins joins the duo for one song, 'Der Hirt auf dem Felsen', Schubert's penultimate composition. Inspired by yodelling, this extended lied ends with the hope of a better life, with spring just around the corner and the prophetic words of 'now I shall prepare/to go a-wandering' heralding the composer's approaching death.