Schubert: 4 Impromptus, D899 (Op. 90)

The performance of the Impromptus, D.899, heard here, confirms Curzon’s place as one of the great Schubert players of his generation. Indeed, the audience was so impressed that they couldn’t help applauding between each Impromptu. Not only does Curzon manage to play with a range of emotion, from limpid tenderness to controlled aggression, but his attention to the sound he produces from the piano never fails to impress. This was one of Curzon’s most salient attributes; for him the sound he made at the keyboard was paramount and it is his combination of cerebral interpretation, no doubt acquired in part from two years study with Artur Schnabel, coupled with his acute attention to sound, that made Curzon such a unique pianist.

Listening to the first Impromptu one can hear that it is not just the beauty of sound that Curzon is concerned with, but the balance between the hands, parts and voices, and the way the harmony of the left hand supports Schubert’s glorious melodies. Indeed, it is good to have Curzon in a live performance of this work as, although he recorded a short studio recital of works by Liszt and Schubert for the BBC in December 1961, he omitted the first and most substantial Impromptu playing only the last three.

One of the highlights of the 1961 Edinburgh Festival was Curzon’s performance of Mozart’s last Piano Concerto, K.595 in B flat. He later travelled to London to perform the work again at the Proms and it is this performance that is heard on this CD.

Curzon is supported by the London Philharmonic Orchestra with Sir Adrian Boult, who had not appeared at the Proms since 1958. The orchestral playing is at once smooth and elegant with string and wind playing beautifully shaped and phrased by the conductor, matching Curzon’s style to perfection.

After the success of Simone Dinnerstein’s first album for Sony Classical, “Bach – A strange beauty”, which immediately earned the No. 1 spot on the US Billboard Classical Chart, and is one of the few classical albums to make the US Billboard Top 200, Simone’s second Sony album is again devoted to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. This time the pianist juxtaposes music by J.S Bach with that of Franz Schubert.

Simone Dinnerstein believes the music of Bach and Schubert shares a certain distinctive quality; “their non-vocal music has a powerful narrative, a vocal element… Bach and Schubert’s melodic lines are so fluent, so expressive, and so minutely inflected that they sound as though they might at any moment burst suddenly into speech. They sound like something almost being said.”

Inspired by lines from Philip Larkin’s poem “The Trees”, Simone Dinnerstein brings her own unique voice to Bach’s first two Partitas and Schubert’s Four Impromptus Op.90, revealing the inherent vocal qualities in these instrumental works.

The decision to place the Schubert Four Impromptus inbetween Bach’s Partitas only serves to emphasize the similarities between the works which were written over 100 years apart.

Paul Lewis has just emerged from a vast Beethoven project: the complete sonatas and piano concertos, greeted all over the world as a landmark and completed in 2011 by the 'Diabelli Variations' – and now he returns to Franz Schubert, the other key focus of his concert career, the other pillar of his discography.

In this double album, three late sonatas are accompanied by two sets of short pieces brimming with inventiveness, the ' Impromptus' and 'Klavierstücke'.

“there were magical moments too, when Lewis's playing touched the sublime. His own Schubert odyssey is not to be missed by anybody who appreciates pianism of the highest caliber.” Barry Millington, London Evening Standard, concert review

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.