Search - Schubert, Arthur Schnabel :: Arthur Schnabel: The Complete Schubert Recordings 1932-1950

A Must

James K. Hanson | Hudson, New York | 10/04/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This box contains all of Artur Schnabel's Schubert recordings. Schnabel's reputation for intellectuality and musical integrity sometimes leads listeners to expect a kind of joyless Teutonic paragon when they hear him; in these Schubert records, to the contrary, one hears immense joy in the music, rhythmic freedom, insouciance, ecstasy. One of the great things about this box is the sound quality. Schnabel created a bell-like sound at the instrument, a lyrical, and to my ears, deeply affecting sound that is often lost in modern remastering. Not here. Some of Schnabel's pupils felt that his Schubert playing was even greater than his legendary Beethoven. Don't miss this opportunity to discover if they were right."

The untamed flame of genius!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 06/19/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Depth, versatility and multiplicity of the expression. Here you have a loyal depiction of Schubert's piano music. Indeed, after Beethoven's death the musical taste of the big audiences tended to label and epitomize the composers. Beethoven, the lonely hero, Schumann and his romantic muse, Chopin the man of the sensuous melancholy, Liszt and Thalberg the fierce lions of the keyboard, Mendelssohn, the prodigal son and Bach the solemn austerity.



These epithets not only shaped but wrought and nourished almost three generations about the way to regard the concert program as "Pictures at an exhibition" in which the introspection was left aside where the vibrant fireworks and boisterousness made possible to Gottschalk become a legend, a sort of the supreme magician (when he gathered one thousand pianos in a public concert) , where the paraphrases on themes of opera were the total warranty for an inminent success.



According these rules of the show business , we would not be surprised Schubert's music remained overlooked and forgotten. The cornerstone and the basic principles of the musical Romanticism of the first two decades of the XIX Century began its slow process of decay. But meanwhile Schubert's music had to wait until his first centenary in 1928, when Arthur Schnabel, Wilhelm Kempff and Edwin Fischer showed the world Schubert was a true musical genius and not only a composer of arresting Lieder.



In this sense, this set is not only transcendental but revealing and propitiatory about the depth, expansiveness and multidimensionality of his musical content.



For many, Schnabel was the voice of Beethoven. On the contrary, I think this epithet must be assigned to Kempff, being Schnabel the supreme harbinger to bring us back (like Mendelssohn made with Bach) the world about the pristine and first order importance of this flaming genius.



Don't miss this historical set.



"

THE ART OF MUSIC BEEN IN THEIR HEARTS

Wafa E. Alfaris | Kuwait | 05/24/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"THE ART OF MUSIC:

if you would like to travell within the soul of any one soul hear this ."