Schubert: 6 German Dances D820

“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.” Bryce Morrison, Gramophone