Paul Badura-Skoda Plays Schubert
Robin Friedman | Washington, D.C. United States | 11/27/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Although he recorded the complete piano sonatas of Schubert early in his career, this recent recording by Paul Badura-Skoda (b. 1927) brings the insight of age and study to this music. Known as a scholar-pianist, Badura-Skoda has spent many years with this music. The recording dates from 2005 with Baruda-Skoda performing on a modern Bosendorfer. The CD includes three sonatas, none of which had been published at the time of Schubert's death. The performances are filled with Schubert's lyricism and song. But they also show the more intropsective, tragic side of this composer whose piano sonatas were unjustly neglected for almost a century. Badura-Skoda also wrote the detailed liner notes for this CD which will reward reading.
The recital opens with probably the most frequently-played Schubert sonata, the three-movement Sonata in A major, opus 120, D.664. This is the one Schubert sonata which is within the range of good amateur pianists, and I have myself attempted it. Published in 1829, the sonata dates, according to Badura-Skoda from 1819. In his notes, Badura -Skoda finds a Mozartean character to this lyrical work. This sonata may be interpreted as either a light, singing work or as music of deep introspection. In his famous recording, Richter takes the work the latter way, but here Badura-Skoda opts for an extroverted, carefree approach. He takes the opening, singing Allegro moderato at a brisk tempo emphasizing the singing character of the music. The beautiful andante is given a Mozartean, peaceful, and nocturnal touch. The work concludes with a dance-like allegro, full of dramatic pauses with substantial counterpoint in the middle section. Badura-Skoda emphasizes the waltz-like aspects of this music. This is a beautiful reading of a deceptively simple piece.
Badura-Skoda compares the next sonata on the program, the sonata in f minor, D.625/505, to Chopin. He describes it aptly as a "futurist" work. This four-movement work dates from 1818 although it was not discovered until 1897. The two seemingly separate "D" numbers in this piece were in fact put together as a single sonata by Schubert shortly before his death. This was my first hearing of the piece. The opening movement lacks a recaptitulation, and the version played here was prepared by Badura-Skoda using the material in the sonata's extensive exposition. With the exception of the singing lieder-like slow movement, the three remaining movements of this work shows Schubertian combination of song-like innocence and introspective tragedy. It is tempting, as Badura-Skoda does, to find a programmatic meaning in Schubert's sonatas and to relate them to his songs. A book called "Franz Schubert and the Rose Cross Mystery" by Frank Ruppert takes a heavily mystical and autobiographical approach to Schubert's music. Ruppert writes of this f minor sonata (p.276)
"In this priceless piano sonata Schubert presents the wanderer in a painful moment. The beloved, in whom the wanderer experienced the beauty of God, has disappeared. All that remains is a star, a promise of yet more radiant light, which reminds the wanderer that eventually his love yearning will be satisfied. This star of transcendental hope is a wondrous consolation. In the language of poetry rather than of theology, the composer affirms the meaning of hope in the face of tragedy and death."
The final sonata on this program, the four-movement sonata in c minor, D.958 was one of a group of three that Schuber composed shortly before his death. Both Beethoven and Mozart wrote great tragic sonatas in c minor, and Schubert's work in the key belongs with them. Schubert's is a long, brooding, death-haunted work which Badura-Skoda compares to Schubert's late song-cycle "Winterreise". Both Badura-Skoda and Ruppert, in the book mentioned above, find echoes of Schubert's song "Atlas" by Heine" in the work's opening movement, as the hero sings:
"I am Atlas doomed,
Carrying the world of pain upon my shoulders.
I stagger under what I connot bear,
My heart strained to breaking!"
(Ruppert, p. 420)
Badura-Skoda draws parallels between the slow movement of this sonata and the adagio cantabile of Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique. The third movement of this piece is a short, dancelike, but bittersweet minuet. Schubert's c minor sonata concludes with a lengthy galloping Tarantella, a movement of extended bleak loneliness and defiance. Ruppert describes Schubert's c minor sonata as "a renewal of the composer's committment to his life's work, a renewal coming only three months before his death. Surely the temptation to give it all up must have been strong, but the powers within him were even stronger. The creative urge could not be overwhelmed even by his awareness that what he was about was politically incorrect and religiously unorthodox precisely because of its intensity and purity." (p.420)
Lovers of Schubert's piano sonatas will want to hear this CD by Paul Badura-Skoda.
Robin Friedman"
An album worthy to acquire!
Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 07/26/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"
The recorded Sonatas in this superb album are part of the immense musical bequeath of Schubert. These pages have surmounted the test of time although the super virtuosity of Liszt, the romantic moods of Schumann, the refined enchantment of Chopin's and the greatness of Beethoven 's Piano Sonatas.
After having been almost buried form the memory if the great audiences, we must thank for the posterity the epic efforts of such notable pianist such as Artur Schnabel and Edwin Fisher who literally wrought the soul , spirit and grandiloquence of this supreme master; pianist of pianist, ceaseless studious of Schubert's piano music as he humbly confess in the booklet.
None of these three Sonatas were released during Schubert's life, and these are in rigorous tandem, the A major Op. 120 D 664, The F minor D. 625 and finally the superb and to my mind one of the greatest piano Sonata ever composed; the C minor D..958 .
These works were admirably played by Mr. Badura Skoda (46 by then) at the MozartsaaL, Vienna in May and September 1973 in a Bösendorfer Imperia, possibly the most adequate piano to make sound Schubert with vibrant intensity and luminous lyricism.
The level of performance of all these works are simply out of this world and certainly belong to a very careful and detailed revision of the best interpretations of this colossal artist, who makes use of his exuberant pianism to illuminate the score and majestic deepness of such notable works.
It's useless to add something else for all those who known the admirable trajectory of this outstanding master. So having listened seven times the last week, I don't hesitate just for a second to recommend you.
This is an album for the history of the music.
"
Track Listings (11) - Disc #1