Schubert: Allegretto in C minor, D915

Paul Lewis is today regarded as one of the leading pianists of his generation. Having won the most coveted prizes of the great classical institutions for both his concert career and his recordings on harmonia mundi (Diapason d’Or of the year 2002, 25th Premio Internationale Accademia Musicale Chigiana di Siena, Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, and three Gramophone Awards including Recording of the Year in 2008), he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Southampton in 2009. He is also the first pianist in the history of the BBC Proms to have played the complete Beethoven concertos in a single season (2010).

He appears as a guest in the most prestigious concert halls and with the foremost orchestras and enjoys a privileged relationship with the Wigmore Hall, where he has performed more than 50 times. Early in 2011, Paul Lewis embarked on a two-year concert tour devoted to the works written by Schubert in the last six years of his life. When this is completed, he will have played in London, New York, Chicago, Tokyo, Melbourne, Rotterdam, Bologna, Florence and at the Schwarzenberg Schubertiade and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris.

Pianist Imogen Cooper continues her critically acclaimed Schubert Live series with the third 2-CD release of the composer’s late piano music, recorded live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

The highly respected and acclaimed pianist Imogen Cooper is enjoying something of a renaissance with her ongoing series of Schubert’s solo piano works on Avie. International accolades for the recordings abound, from NPR to the BBC, Gramophone to the New York Times. Imogen continues her exploration of the composer’s late piano music with Volume 3, recorded live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in December 2009.

Schubert was the ultimate romantic and Imogen brings out the full spectrum of his complex and colourful compositions, from the gentle German Dances, D790, and pearl-like Impromptus, D899, to the turbulent A minor Sonata, D 784, and mighty B flat Sonata, D960. Imogen says: “I’m not afraid of being described as a Schubert specialist,” even though her active repertoire ranges from Bach to Thomas Adès. “He has taken up a lot of my waking time for more than 30 years. In fact, you could say that his songs and his piano music have sometimes been close to an obsession for me.” It is more than 20 years since Cooper made a live and recorded survey of all the piano music Schubert composed from early 1823 until his death in 1828 at the age of 31. “One of the reasons I’ve taken it all up again is that I feel it ten times more strongly than I did 20 years ago: the message has become more direct to me. Schubert has become even more necessary to my well-being, and I sense strongly that he is important for an audience’s well-being too.”

After his Bach concertos, a classical bestseller in both France and Germany, the young French pianist David Fray brings his unique sensibilities to Schubert. David Fray has already declared his particular affinity with Austro-German music, and after two CDs featuring Bach (and a DVD featuring him in Bach concertos) he now turns to the early Romantic era and Schubert, with a programme of the six Moments musicaux D780, the four Impromptus D899 and the Allegretto in C minor D915, recorded in Berlin.

His approach to the music is typically questioning and illuminating. “At the piano,” he told the French magazine Pianiste, “I try to make music like a conductor, not just as a pianist. I approach the score as if it is a reduction of a symphonic work. The piano constitutes a way of getting nearer the heart of the music. How do you balance the voices? How do you find a progression in a movement? How do you put the polyphony in place?… It’s much more interesting to study Bach’s approach to the orchestra in the Magnificat or the Christmas Oratorio than to read books on how to play Bach on the piano. Each time I approach a new score, I ask myself how the composer would have written it if he hadn’t decided on the piano. Take Schubert’s first impromptu, for instance: it starts like a reduction of an orchestral score: a tutti chord and then the melody is presented on its own, as if on a flute. Then the winds take up the theme before the strings make their entry. Most of the work comprises three or four independent lines which sing together – a cello ostinato, counterpoint harmony in the violas, say, and the winds above it.”

His recording of Bach concertos, released last November, has now sold over 40,000 copies in France and Germany, singling him out as a pianist to watch. The French magazine Le Monde de la musique said: “The interpretation is always generous, enthusiastic and rich in contrasts. The fast movements appeal with their healthy energy, exuberant humour in their finales and lyricism throughout. No moments of tension stiffen the pianist’s phrases and he gives free rein to the sound,” while the German news magazine Spiegel described Fray as “perhaps the most inspired, certainly the most original Bach-player of his generation … He discovers more psychological depth, more well-rounded stories and more refined emotions than his colleagues … His approach is lyrical, flexible, elegant and instilled with a cultivated bel canto aesthetic.”

After his first CD devoted to Mompou, which attracted much favourable comment, Javier Perianes now turns to the 'short pieces' of Schubert. However, what the composer called 'impromptus' or 'Klavierstücke' went so far beyond the bounds of mere entertainment for amateurs that they were originally rejected by publishers on account of their difficulty.These 'lieder for solo piano', as one might term them, concentrate the myriad emotions to which Schubert alone possessed the key.

Javier Perianes studied with Richard Goode, Alicia de Larrocha and Daniel Barenboim, with whom he recently played Beethoven's 'Emperor' Concerto. He has appeared with many noted Spanish and international orchestras, under conductors as varied as Paul McCreesh, Kirill Petrenko, Josep Pons and Libor Pešek.

On his new album, Matthias Kirschnereit displays a fine sense of the nuances and rough contrasts required to follow in Schubert’s footsteps.

For the latest release in his critically acclaimed Schubert cycle, pianist Gerhard Oppitz has created a programme of Schubert’s most visionary and personal works. Oppitz once again displays his mastery and profound understanding of the great works of the Romantic piano repertoire.

South Korean pianist William Youn has been recognized as one of the most promising and unique pianist of the young generation. Since his debut with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of eleven, Youn has appeared regularly as a soloist with Orchestras such as The Cleveland Orchestra, the Mariinsky Theater Symphony Orchestra, and the Belgian National Orchestra among others. He has performed in world’s most prestigious venues including the Lincoln Center (New York), the Disney Hall (LA), the Musikverein (Vienna), the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexiko City), the Palau de la Musica (Barcelona), and the Auditorio Nacional (Madrid).

William Youn is a prizewinner at international competitions such as the Cleveland International Competition, the Concorso Alessandro Casagrande, the Shanghai Piano Competition, and was a finalist at the Busoni Competition, and the Concurs Reine Elisabeth, Brussels. His recording “2010 - Chopin, Schumann, Wolf” released in 2010 by ARS Produktion has been selected as the recording of the Month by the “Pizzicato” Magazine of Luxembourg.

This CD includes Sonata in D major D850, Adagio in E major D612 and Sonata in A flat major D557. “This Series continues to be most impressive. Vermuelen must be the ideal Schubert player, and the instrument, a superbly restored Streicher und Sohn of 1826, has an astonishing range of dynamics….” Early Music Review

Trudelies Leonhardt comes from a well known musical family, her brother being the well known harpsichordist and conductor Gustav Leonhardt. She has played with most of the major European orchestras including the Concertgebouw, The Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich, The London Mozart Players and the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne. On this excellent recording she plays a fortepiano built by Benignus Seidner, Vienna 1815.1820.