Franz Peter Schubert

“Uchida's concentration and inwardness are of a rare order in her absorbed, deeply poetic reading of the B flat Sonata. No pianist makes you so aware how much of the first two movements is marked pp or even ppp; and none conjures such subtlety of colour in the softest dynamics: listen, for instance, to her playing of the three unearthly C sharp minor chords that usher in the firstmovement development, or her timing and colouring of the breathtaking sideslip from C sharp minor to C major in the Andante. Other pianists may find a stronger undercurrent of foreboding or desperation in these two movements – though Uchida builds the development of the initial Molto moderato superbly to its dramatic climax.
But none probes more hauntingly the music's mysterious contemplative ecstasy or creates such a sense of inspired improvisation. And her limpid cantabile sonorities are always ravishing on the ear. She's equally attuned to the less rarefied world of the Scherzo and finale, the former a glistening, mercurial dance, con delicatezza indeed, the latter graceful and quixotic, with a hint of emotional ambiguity even in its ostensibly cheerful main theme and a tigerish ferocity in its sudden Beethovenian eruptions.
The coupling is generous: the three Klavierstücke, D946, composed, like the sonata, in Schubert's final year, 1828, and assembled by Brahms for publication. She brings a wonderfully impassioned sweep, with razor-sharp rhythms, to the opening of the E flat minor, No-1, and mesmerically floats its slow B major episode. She also restores the beguiling barcarolle- like episode in A flat that Schubert excised from his autograph manuscript. The recording finely captures Uchida's subtle, pellucid sound world. A revealing disc from a Schubertian of rare insight and spirituality.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“This is something very special. Pires's characteristic impassioned absorption in all she plays – that concentration which makes the listener appear to be eavesdropping on secrets shared between friends – could hardly find a truer soul mate than Schubert.
Each Impromptu has a rare sense of integrity and entirety, born of acute observation and long-pondered responses.
Pires's instinct for tempo and pacing brings a sense of constant restraint, a true molto moderato to the Allegro of the C minor work from D899, created by a fusion of right-hand tenuto here with momentary left-hand rubato there. Then there's the clarity of contour within the most subtly graded undertones of the G flat major of D899 which re-creates it as a seemingly endless song. Or an Andante just slow, just nonchalant enough for the Rosamunde theme of the D935 B-flat major to give each variation space and breath enough to sing out its own sharply defined character.
The Allegretto, D915 acts as a Pause between the two discs, a resting place, as it were, for reflection and inner assessment on this long journey. Its end – which could as well be its beginning – is in the Drei Klavierstücke, D946 of 1828. The first draws back from the fiery impetuousness within the Allegroassai's tautly controlled rhythms, to an inner world with its own time scale; the second, more transpired than played, has an almost unbearable poignancy of simplicity.
The paradox of these unselfregarding performances is how unmistakably they speak and sing out Pires and her unique musicianship. To draw comparisons here would be not so much odious as to miss the point.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010