Schubert: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-21 (complete)

For as long as he can remember, Paul Badura-Skoda has always been intimately linked with Schubert’s music. At a time when knowledge of the composer was still very sketchy, he scrutinized the princeps editions and manuscripts in order to track down errors and to establish Urtext versions which today are referential. But beyond that, he was able to complete certain movements that Schubert had left unfinished without however introducing music foreign to the composer. In the exhaustive essay which he was keen on writing for the present recording, we can read with profit, Sonata by Sonata, the nature of the work accomplished.

The choice of period instruments responds to a quest for colours and sound ranges favouring a greater intimacy with the composer’s music, permitted by the use of only those instruments which Schubert knew, which he used and for which he actually wrote his music. However what is most striking is the kind of identification between the performer, Badura-Skoda and the composer, Schubert. In this recording of the complete piano sonatas on period instruments, which took place in Vienna between 1991 and 1996, the Viennese master delivers the work of a lifetime: Schubert’s music with his passion, his suffering and that inimitable tone which makes his native city the place so essentially and existentially identified with music.

This collection of the twenty Sonatas for period piano recorded by Paul Badura-Skoda on the instruments in his own collection has every chance of being considered by posterity as one of the most creative and most significant achievements.

This is a re-release of the acclaimed Schubert Piano Sonatas with Michael Endres. It is now released in a 10 CD box together with the complete recording of all Dances, Waltzes and Ecossaises at a very special price.

Schubert’s piano sonatas span his creative life, from the No.1 D157 of 1815 to the three great sonatas of 1828 D958, 959 and 960. Schubert’s sonatas are a world away from Beethoven’s dramatic statements, and from the overtly virtuosic sonatas of Hummel and Weber. They contain some of his most profound music, the world of song never being far away. Drawing out the ever present patina of sadness, even in what sounds like ‘happy’music is essential if the performer is to understand this music. Some of his best loved works are for solo piano, and the Impromptus D899 and D935 are miniature masterworks, full of passion, drama, reflection and above all supreme lyricism.

Recordings made by Denon in the 1990s