Schubert: Sonata D. 959; Four Impromptus, D. 935 [Import] [Original recording remastered]

Track Listings

1. (1-4) Piano Sonata In A Major,D 959

2. (5-8) Four Impromptus Op.142, D. 935

Editorial Reviews
Album Details
First Time on CD. Digitally Remastered.

Customer Reviews:

One of the best of the Masterworks series.......2007-07-06

Brilliant Classics' "Masterworks" series, if you can get them cheaply (and currently they go for about $1/CD from Amazon's France Web site), are a great way to amass a significant library of the works of several great computers. The production values and the performances themselves are uneven, and the interpretations are not always historically-informed (unlike the bulk of Brilliant's "Complete Editions" of the works of Bach and Mozart). But there are numerous gems in the rough in The Masterworks, and the economic value is unsurpassed, even if you were to throw away half of the CDs in each set.

You're unlikely to throw away much of this Schubert collection though. This seems to be the finest of the Masterworks sets, with a succession of solid, often first-rate performances of most of the major Schubert works. Here's what you get:

- The symphonies, performed by The Hanover Band in a historically-informed style. Very interesting performances perhaps marred by an odd recording balance that makes the woodwinds sound distant. Takes up four CDs
- The six Latin masses. Also the Deutsche Messe in the version with wind instruments. Five CDs in all
- Edison Denisov's completion of Schubert's unfinished dramatic work Lazarus (2 CDs, Helmuth Rilling's premier recording)
- The last four string quartets (including the Quartettsatz) with #9 thrown in. Also the octet, piano quintet ("The Trout"), string quintet and both piano trios. In short all the canonical chamber works. Performances are strong, and well recorded
- Two CDs of violin/piano duets, including Op. 137 and Op. 162
- 19 of the 21 "canonical" piano sonatas (missing #7 and #12) as well as the Moments Musicaux, Impromptus, German Dances, Wanderer Fantasy and several other piano works, 11 CDs in all. As with the chamber music, the performances and recordings are strong, often stunning
- Two CDs of piano duets, including the Divertissements and D. 617
- Song cycles: Die Schöne Müllerin, Winterreise, Schwanengesang, and four CDs of standalone songs, including such "standards" as Erlkönig and Gretchen am Spinnrade. The singers are a bit uneven here, ranging from standouts Robert Holl, Deitrich Fischer-Dieskau and John Shirley-Quirk to the somewhat shrill Arleen Augér

Missing from the collection is Rosamunde, and a number of famous songs: Die Forelle (The Trout), Death and the Maiden, Ellens Gesang III (the so-called Ave Maria, D. 839), Der Hirt auf dem Felsen and Der Wanderer. But you do have almost all the important instrumental works, and most of the vocal works generally considered to be essential, with some padding added in the form of minor works such as the parochial Deutsche Messe, the German Dances, and the modernist-informed completion of Lazarus by the 20th Century Russian composer Denisov.

As with the other Masterworks sets, there are no program notes. You'll need to do your own research. Answers.com is a good starting point for Schubert compositions. There are also no song texts or translations provided, so again you'll need to track down your own. Try "The Lied and Art Song Texts Page" for lieder lyrics and translations. Hunt down a good price on this collection, browsing one of Amazon's European sites if necessary, and treat yourself to many hours of lovely music for the cost of a modest night out.

Will not buy this.......2007-03-16

I can't see D965 or D945 on this 40 disks worth of Schubert. Bizarre! There are so many great songs missing it scares me.

Worth it!.......2006-12-19

One of the best in "The Masterpices" series. Many of the discs (the symphonies in particular) were licensed from Nimbus and other full-line labels. Not all that long ago these discs would have set you back $18 to $20 a piece. That said, I still wouldn't part with my Hyperion collection. 40 CD's at this price... you can't go wrong.

Great way to jumpstart a schubert collection.......2006-12-19

Hartmut Holl, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Stephanie Brown, and Jaime Laredo as well as the Stuttgart Bach Collegium performing Schubert are hardly "left-behind artists and ensembles" as the previous naysayer states. These are licensed from major label releases and from the original masters issued at a bargain price, especially for the number of discs you get. Sound quality ranges from good to excellent. Good for all Schubertians and anyone who wants to jumpstart a Schubert collection.

Better to Pick a Few First-rate Performances.......2006-11-14

This is a bargain in dollar/listening time ratio, but who cares? There are many second-rate performances by left-behind artists and ensembles. Obviously the economics of resurrecting disks that don't require royalties has been the driving factor of selection. (On the other hand, the complete edition boxed sets of Bach and Mozart, which you'll find if you look, are stupendous successes artistically.)

Schubert: Sonata D. 959; Four Impromptus, D. 935

Average customer rating:

Me, too
GREAT BEYOND ORDINARY GREATNESS

Schubert: Sonata D. 959; Four Impromptus, D. 935

Manufacturer: Sbme Import
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B0000AH3ER
Release Date: 2003-09-01

Tracks:

(1-4) Piano Sonata In A Major,D 959
(5-8) Four Impromptus Op.142, D. 935

Album Details

First Time on CD. Digitally Remastered.

Customer Reviews:

Me, too.......2004-08-17

I have been waiting for this particular recording on CD for 2 decades, having owned it earlier on lp. (Like Mr. Bryson above, I heard Serkin in person play the Beethoven 29th and am still alive.) I can add little to the excellent review Mr. Bryson has given: this is the only recording that gets the Schubert tempo right in every movement, comparing and contrasting the overwhelming diversities in range, tone, sudden shifts from a kind of insanity of despair to the torment of joy. It is foolish of me to select any part as outstanding, but my greatest satisfaction is with the last movement, which no one else (no matter how great or greater in general) does to my knowledge to reveal its natural essence. "Words move, music moves / Only in time; but that which is only living / Can only die. Words after speech / Reach into the silence. . . ."

GREAT BEYOND ORDINARY GREATNESS.......2004-02-06

Occasionally a record strikes me as being one of the final towering peaks of recorded music, and this is one of those records.

Serkin was difficult to record, and not just in the sense that he was a terrible old fusspot who kept blocking the release of his own records on the grounds that he could do the pieces better. The difficulty was in capturing his highly individual tone-quality, in particular in coping with his enormous dynamic range, and above all in handling his near-unbelievable fortissimo. The more successful efforts by and large duck the problem by simply constricting the dynamic extremes, which at least prevents distortion but denies us some of the things that made Serkin so completely unique, like the left-hand crescendo in Diabelli's theme from Beethoven's variations, surely the most phenomenal increase in tone there can ever have been in the space of five notes. I would put this record in this `more successful' category by and large. The tone is rather clangorous in the first few bars, but it soon improves. My imagination is having to reconstruct what the tone-contrasts were really like (I never heard him live in this piece but I heard his Hammerklavier and have lived to tell the tale), but enough of them survives to put this great record of this great piece in a class of its own. It is not a piece that wants for fine, even great, performances. My own collection also includes Brendel, Lupu and Zacharias, and by great good fortune I heard Pollini broadcast just the other day. And not one of them even touches Serkin.

More than anything else, I suppose it's a matter of the sheer bigness of this reading. Schubert had, in my own personal opinion, the greatest purely musical gift that any man ever had. When his genius is operating at full stretch, as in this work, he generates more sheer power than even Beethoven can do, because less of it comes from his own efforts and more of it from something or someone outside above and beyond. This is the Schubert you will get from Serkin here. He is very careful, as Zacharias also is, not to let the theme of the last movement suggest one of the mill-songs as it easily could. In the slow movement he is not alone in conveying memorably the weary trudging Winterreise feel, but nobody, not even Pollini, does the frightful hysterical up-and-down rush in the central episode quite like Serkin. This is largely a matter of rhythmic sense, and I offer my personal view that in the matter of rhythm and timing Serkin was as unique and unapproached as Michelangeli was in the matter of tone-quality. The sublime rhythmic subtlety pervades the whole performance. It is there in a brilliant, arrogant, account of the scherzo that makes all the others sound underpowered. It is there above all in the great first movement, where his steady unhurried march is in danger of making everyone else sound trivial.

The makeweight is the op 142 impromptus, in fact the first thing I ever heard him play in real life. They are very fine to my way of thinking, although he did a far better #4 in his spectacular 1957 recital from Lugano. In these pieces I know so many performances that I would not even know where to start in making a recommendation. You will find a certain amount of the unique Serkin in his playing here, especially in the highly imaginative #1 where he uses his left hand to produce an unusual melodic line in the `duet' theme, and where I hear some strange harmonies at one point that I must have been hearing, indeed playing, all my life without realising how strange they are.

I am sure that by now I have made it clear that I recommend this record.

Average customer rating:

Schubert: Sonata D. 959; Four Impromptus, D. 935

Manufacturer: Sony
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

Classical Music | The Sony BMG Masterworks Store | Amazon.com Label Stores | Stores | Music

Classical Instrumental Music | The Sony BMG Masterworks Store | Amazon.com Label Stores | Stores | Music
ASIN: B00064AEME
Release Date: 2004-11-02

Track Listings: