Friday 17 December 2010

Schubert's B flat sonata D 960 is definitely one of my top works for listening to. I got to know it decades ago via an LP with Clifford Curzon. I now have thirteen recordings of the piece which is, for me, at the very peak of piano sonatas. Recently The Gramophone magazine ran a brief survey of the 113 (!) known recordings. That by Wilhelm Kempff came out top, so I took it off the shelf and listened to it again. For my taste, it's very good but with a slight air of routine; it doesn't sound as if it were that special a piece for Kempff on that day. Curzon is still very good (especially in the second movement) but, for me, his playing of the piece is too studied and too precious, and he does not make the all-important (for me) exposition repeat in the first movement.

I have previously praised the recording by Leif Ove Andsnes so I took that off the shelf. I still like it very much. Andsnes plays with a simplicity and naturalness that makes one imagine Schubert is in the room. Much of the music is resigned and world-weary and does not need elaborate pointing by the pianist. Andsnes makes the first movement repeat (as does Richter) and I think it is very necessary for the overall form of the work (presumably so did Schubert, which is why he wrote some extra bars as lead-in to the repeat). I must go back to Richter (a performance in Moscow that I like) and also re-sample the recording by "Joyce Hatto" -- who was actually playing I know not, but I remember liking the performance a few years ago.

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