Classical Music

Schubert, F.: Vierjahrige Posten (Der) / Zwillingsbruder (Di

V 5: EDITION FISCHER-DIESKAU

Pianist Mathieu Gaudet presents the final instalment of his Complete Schubert Sonatas and Major Piano Works recording series. This final volume, The Testament, showcases the very last Sonata by Schubert in B flat major D. 960, a work with a unique sound environment, at once lush but modest, passionate but patient, opening a door to a world of extreme sensitivity. Also on this album is the Sonata in E minor D. 566, written by a romantic 20 year-old man, full of fun ideas and strokes of genius.

Pianist Lukas Geniusas pays tribute to the fantasy, a form synonymous with freedom, dear to the Romantics. Schubert sets the figure of the wanderer to music in his Lied Der Wanderer, which, a few years later, would give rise to a large-scale instrumental work: the Fantasy in C major, D. 760 (1822), later known as the "Wanderer" Fantasy. It's four-part structure could be that of a four-movement sonata cycle, but these sections follow one another without interruption in a continuous process, like an uninterrupted journey. Fascinated by this work, Liszt wrote his transcription for piano and orchestra in 1851, two years before his famous Sonata in B minor, which is also monothematic and unfolds as a single, vast movement. More in line with the classicists, Tchaikovsky cultivates virtuosity and instrumental brilliance in his Concert Fantasy of 1884. With the Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen, conducted by Modestas Pitrenas, Geniusas offers a rare (if not unprecedented) pairing of these two fantasies, separated by just over six decades.

This album presents a new arrangement of Franz Schubert's song cycle Die schone Mullerin, performed by baritone Roderick Williams with the Carducci Quartet. Originally composed in 1823 for voice and piano, the cycle sets poems by Wilhelm Muller that trace the emotional journey of a young miller through hope, love, jealousy and despair. In this recording, the piano part is reimagined for string quartet, drawing out the implied instrumental textures in Schubert's writing while preserving the narrative flow of the songs. The arrangement offers a fresh perspective on the work's structure and atmosphere, highlighting it's central Romantic themes of nature, longing and reflection.

... So what, then, did Winterreise mean to us? At the risk of stating the obvious: it was a journey - albeit a journey with no real destination. The depth of this Everest-like score offered new insights and fresh layers with every reading. Consequently, there was never - and still isn't, despite years of preparation and live performances - a real sense of completion, no point at which we could say we were "finished" studying each lied. And perhaps the Wanderer's journey is also without destination. A physical trek through a cold and indifferent, if not openly hostile, nature, it is also a psychological path through the difficult phases of processing loss - a process that, in truth, never completes. The traveler clings to the pain inflicted by a society that rejected him and continues to reject him, like the barking dogs announcing his passing, finding refuge only in the suffering of memory and in each weary step through the snow

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Classical Music

Markus Sch�fer writes of his new release: "A musical interpretation should always strive to breathe new life into a composer's legacy by making it audible and understandable in accordance with the here and now. In this new recording we have once again dared to open up our performance experimentally to the sort of effects that emerge from spontaneous improvisation. Faithfulness to the original begins with a willingness to decode, decipher, and interpret the score; it is not achieved by staring fearfully in awe at the manuscript. To the contrary: we are fully aware that any confrontation with a masterpiece of the past can only be justified if we recreate it anew while maintaining a fragile balance between faithfulness to the musical work and faithfulness to the "text"."

Classical Music

The "Great" C major Symphony was the last symphony that Schubert composed – a “Finished” to follow his "Unfinished", the first two movements of which he had just completed before discontinuing work on it (for reasons unknown). In contrast to his far shorter Sixth Symphony, also in C major, it was named "the Great" - and it is indeed a great and magnificent work, marking the culmination of his symphonic oeuvre. It is monumental and representative, and was written with large audiences very much in mind. Schubert began this composition in August 1824, or possibly even as late as March 1825. Most of the work on it took place in the summer of 1825, during the longest Journey of his life. It took him from Vienna via Linz, Steyr, Gmunden (where he found the scenery "truly heavenly"), Salzburg and then up to Bad Gastein, where he saw some magnificent alpine peaks. The first page of the score manuscript is dated "March 1828" – possibly the month in which he finally completed the work. On November 19 of that same year, Schubert died at the age of only thirty-one. The symphony was premiered posthumously on March 21, 1839 in the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and conducted by the Gewandhaus Kapellmeister at that time - the 30-year-old Felix Mendelssohn. This exciting live recording features the special acoustics of the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz.

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REVIEW:

Mariss Jansons presides over an uncommonly engaging performance of Schubert’s uplifting ‘Great’ C major symphony. This is great music-making of unshakable conviction.

– MusicWeb International

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Schubert was known in his time primarily as a composer of songs, but he was also a master of the dance form and wrote prolifically for a middle-class society eager for domestic entertainment. He loved Ländler (triple time country dances), the Écossaises (supposedly Scottish), and the rich variety of genial German dances. Viennese pianos of the day produced a sound that was clear and transparent, very different from modern instruments, and in this recording Yang Liu plays on a Steinway grand and a copy of a mid-1820s fortepiano by Conrad Graf, a maker well known to Schubert.

V 3: STRING QUARTETS

CD with color book & posters

The Danish baritone Johan Reuter often sings leading roles at the New York Metropolitan Opera and is in high demand all over the world. He also loves the lied repertoire, however, and the work closest to his heart is the Schubert song cycle Winterreise (Winter Journey). For this new release, he wanted to record it not with the usual piano accompanist, but in an arrangement for string quartet. Richard Krug from the Copenhagen String Quartet made this highly idiomatic transcription of the piano part and the result is deeper, more moving and with full sound than in the original. This is truly a unique experience. Johan Reuter studied at the Royal Academy of Music and the Academy of the Royal Theatre in his hometown of Copenhagen. He frequented masterclasses of Ernst Haefliger, Anthony Rolfe-Johnson and Richard Trimborn. Since 1996 he has been a soloist of the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, where he sings a large repertoire.

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Classical Music

One can experience with admiration how one of the most important works in chamber music literature lives and breathes when it is awakened to sonorous life. Laureates of the German Music Competition play Schubert's great Octet of 1827 and these young musicians perform at the highest level.

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Played with intensively close listening and feeling the inner essence of the music: this is how Japanese pianist Nami Ejiri approaches the late works of Schubert on her GENUIN debut CD. + Alongside the great Sonata in B-flat major, she plays the Four Impromptus, D. 899 and the more rarely played Allegretto in C minor, D. 915. + Winner of the prestigious Vianna da Motta Int’l Piano Competition, Lisbon, amongst other competition successes, Ms. Ejiri has been teaching piano at the Hochschule for Music in Frankfurt, Germany since 2006.

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On this unique record, Paul Badura Skoda performs three different versions of Schubert’s final Sontata in B-flat major. Each of these versions is performed with a distinct sound on three different pianos: an 1826 Graf fortepiano, a 1923 Bosendorfer and a 2004 Steinway grand.

Classical Music