Schubert: Two Deutsche Tanze D841

“Schubert’s great A major Sonata here receives a performance with an unusual dramatic edge. Christian Zacharias, whose versatility clearly enriches his arresting viewpoint, plays with a savage glint in his eye, bringing Schubert’s restless undercurrents to the surface so that the listener is left limp with a mixture of elation and exhaustion…there are no concessions made to the studio but a fiercely driven evocation of the desperation that hangs over the storm clouds of Schubert’s final years…Everything is relished to the full and nothing is taken for granted, with the composer’s startling harmonic twists and turns underlined with an audacious use of rubato…a vivid and compulsive experience no less boldly recorded.” Gramophone Magazine

“How good, then, to be able to hail [Dalberto’s] spring-like imaginative vitality and spontaneity - not least in the main work, the D major Sonata of 1825. He conveys all the youthful eagerness of the opening Allegro vivace with a stylish lightness and clarity. In the second movement, allowed a liquid, con moto flow, he opened my ears anew to its magical textural felicities and tonal contrasts. (In the) not fully completed F minor Sonata - an arresting portrait of the 21year-old Schubert not yet wholly reconciled to the procrustean demands of sonata form while plainly overwhelmed by the drama of Beethoven's Appassionata. Here again Dalberto draws delectable contrasts of colour from his instrument while constantly savouring the unpredictability that contributes so much to even the immature Schubert's genius.” Gramophone Magazine, April 1996