Search - Schubert, Richter :: Richter 5

Deep into your heart

L. A. LAI | Oberlin, OH USA | 10/26/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The performance of these two Schubert's sonata is the best I've ever listened to. The D960 one was used as the opening and ending background music for "Richter, The Enigma" Film. The sound quality is high.
Slava's performance here is superb compared to London Aldeburgh one. The unusual slow speed for D960 really revealed another angle that hiding deeply inside the sonata. The tone colour is extremely well-balanced. Each movement retains it's own atmosphere.I recommend this definetly to everyone."

Majesterial and transcendent

D. Gollaher | La Jolla | 09/28/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"When Glenn Gould toured Moscow in 1955, he happened to attend a recital in which Richter played Schubert's b-flat sonata. Gould generally disliked Schubert; he found the musical structures too repetitive. Recalling Richter's performance many years afterward, he said that, as he anticipated what he was about to hear, not only did he dread the sonata, his unease heightened when Richter began playing the first movement in the slowest tempo imaginable. But then someting happened, which Gould compared to being swept into a hypnotic trance by piano playing of irresistible power. His assessment was that Richter was "the most powerful musical communicator of our time." Listening to this recording, it's easy to understand how Gould felt. Schurbert's last sonata is sublime and Richter explores its full musical and emotional range."

Visionary moments, transcending strife!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 08/18/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Sonata D. 958 is certainly the most Beethovenian of them. The tonality is C minor, the tragic tonality per excellence. The initial forte and the scalar modulation remind us the opening of Beethoven's C minor Variations. Schubert wanders adventurously for new roads and paths. You find in Schubert not only traces of a late Romanticism, in a musical period that unknowns this meaning, but you may discover unexpected tonalities and hidden musical seeds narrow linked with Schöenberg. These are authentic journeys toward a wasteland, supported by eerie paths. Claudio Arrau remarked: The way to perform these sections is as something skeletal, macabre-without any flesh. Really the work of the death." The terror and the supernatural are inspiration motives, present from his early age, therefore those images constituted an important source of inspiration for his most admirable compositions. That undeniable aspect establishes a true approach to Gustav Mahler.

We finally arrive to what to my mind is the greatest and most complete Piano Sonata ever written previous or later, the Sonata in B- flat D. 960.

This work is so compelling, mesmerizing and expressive that from the first bars foretells us the entry to a new dimension. If your approach is exclusively romantic, sorry you're wrong. Schubert as the great composers can not been labeled. I s Schubert or Beethoven perhaps, romantic composers?. That artifice and intellectual fragility can be satisfied for minor or miniaturist composers (Grieg is the perfect sample) but not for these giants.

The First movement breathes a majestic quiescence a cosmic rapture that has nothing to do with worldly feelings or dramatis personae. Richter plays with clairvoyant modulation in a fascinating and spelling interplay of light and shades, his accents with lacerating and heart rending rapture bar by bar, with accuracy expression and sublime serenity. I feel personally this is a Schubert's personal farewell, the second theme is obstinately tragic but so strongly inspired and positively convinced of his cosmic involvement. Richter `s performance is filed of charm, he gets integrate himself totally with the spirit of the score.

The Second movement is a an admirable work of extreme perfection. It breaths that quiet step of a funeral march but tearless, it constitutes one of these treasured moments of visible greatness and universal inspiration that resumes a metaphysical sorrow, the second theme is more optimist, loaded of a flamboyant joy for life. The theme is A-B-A and we finally come to the re exposition, briefer and carefully weaved this time with major calm and total concentration.

The Menuetto Allegro (which may be considered as a Scherzo in Mahler and Tchaikovsky Symphonies) works out as a magnificent device to evade the tragedy; it's an innocent and irreverent song with reiterative thrills that pretend to distend the emotional and spiritual tension of both previous movements.

The Final movement is an Allegro with the Mozart style, hiding the death's smile masked of a happy melody. You may realize the change of character of the first theme after the second motive. The abrupt and brief final coda is filled of grace (in spite of the facts), and that's another Schubertian feature.

The last aspect I want to remark is the colossal symphonic structure of the Sonata. Schubert composed this Sonata architectonically similar to Beethoven's Third or Ninth, with the first two movements working out the gravity center of the work.

Rhythm, indeed, is the true basis of Schubert's thematic inspiration and also of his structural procedure. The melody is an ornament to the structure rather than the structure itself.

Clifford Curzon characterization of Schubert's final: "Certainly an autumnal glow and a sense of fulfillment suffuse this inexhaustible sonata."

Schubert can be interpreted only in his totality, as a synthesis of all his musical and emotional qualities, It is that peculiarity that differentiates him from other composers.

Go for this recording, you will find in this performance enough motives to think in one of the supreme musical achievements in any age.



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