Thirty-three years ago Alfred Brendel took us to task for not fully appreciating Schubert's piano sonatas.
Now we live in more enlightened times.
There are many superb recordings, from Mitsuko Uchida tackling the lot on Philips to the revelatory selections by Paul Lewis on Harmonia Mundi.
Leif Ove
Andsnes has always been an inspired Schubertian and the Norwegian pianist has again teamed up with English tenor Ian Bostridge to bring us a collection of songs and occasional pieces, this time complementing the great C minor Piano Sonata D 958.
This is a compelling sonata, from a composer with dying on his mind. And, as one lives with it over the years, its sense of tragedy deepens. The great Claudio Arrau commented how he ended up completely modifying his interpretation, darkening its finale with a more macabre, skeletal tone.
There is a fine sense of the stoic in Andsnes' first movement, with its Beethovian scaffolding.
The wandering tonalities of the Adagio seem to search for spiritual resolution; the abrupt turns of the Minuet similarly disturb and dark clouds loom above the Austrian foothills during its Landler Trio.
The final Tarantella starts blithely, but Andsnes' brutal, surging interjections warn us not to expect unruffled merrymaking.
Of all contemporary lieder singers, Ian Bostridge is one of those most sensitive to the subtleties of the poetry he is singing, a gift that made the two men's recording of Schubert's Winterreise so gripping.
With finely chiselled phrasing, he gives us the desperately searching hero of An die Turen; aided by Andsnes' thundering piano and a marvellously responsive recording, we feel for the anguished soul at the edge of the tomb in Totengrabers Heimweh.
The disc is completed by fragments, some of which finish poignantly mid-phrase where their composer left them.
Goethe's tale of Johanna Sebus rescuing mother and children from raging floods would have been a saga to rival his Erl-king had the composer finished it; a very late Allegretto in C minor is a dragonfly of a piece but Andsnes allows it a graceful 1'55" of fluttering life, before the dawn of C major seals its fate.
Leid Ove Andsnes & Ian Bostridge, Schubert piano music and lieder (EMI 84321).
