text: Mein Blog: Schubert D. 959 A Recording Survey - Complete
  Jonathan Biss: America's Very Serious Pianist of my generation gives us an unserious, vapid performance of this piece. C-
  Jorge Bolet: This aristocratic supervirtuoso gives, as he always does, an immaculately tasteful performance, elegant, and quite soulful, but speaks the music with a too seductive Chopin accent. Lots of emphasis on melody (which, of course, Schubert has even more accumen for than Chopin), but too little fragility, too little harmonic emphasis, too little introversion, too much organization, too much confidence. If Ashkenazy calls to mind virtuoso Chopinists of old like Hoffmann and Horowitz, then Bolet calls to mind much more lyrical Chopinists of old like Cortot and Cherkassky and... Bolet... Contrasts are played down as they must be in Schubert, but so are the pianos and pianissimos, which never truly get quiet. The only performance of the second movement in which the stormy central section feels of a piece with the rest of it, which perhaps misses the point entirely. It always dances around the edges of Schubert-land, making us aware of it, but never quite bringing us into its center except in the Scherzo, which Bolet brings the feel of the Austrian Landler dance as few do. Arrau and Barenboim disfigure it by giving it more supposed depth by distending the rhythms, not so Bolet, who truly understands what it is: a folk dance for the Angels. But it stays on focus so beautifully, so securely bring us Schubert's lyricism, even if he never quite articulates what the lyricism expresses. B+
  Andras Schiff: Another tremendously missed opportunity. To say that Schiff is a perceptive musician is roughly akin to calling the Pope Catholic. For the first three movements, he understands the pacing of this work as perhaps no other pianists does - not too fast in the first and third movements, not too slow in the second, and engaging rubato without letting the rubato dictate the pulse; and there are moments of such poetry in this performance (listen to how he lets that final Neopolitan progression in the first movement float... just magical...). And yet, like Pollini, perhaps even moreso than Pollini, he turns Schubert into a series of tightly wound rhetorical gestures - for more than fifty percent of the work, his chronic need to organize the work into something coherent freezes out the beauty. C+
  Artur Schnabel: The original Schubertian of the piano creates a much more garrulous conversation than the other great Schubertians, but the Schubertian poetry is unmistakable. Just as in his Beethoven, and just like fellow Viennese Paul Badura-Skoda, there is a truly artless, conversational quality to Schnabel's playing that belies his famously inconsistent technique. For all the late romantic tics of his interpretation - the exaggeratedly fast and slow tempos, the extremities of dynamics, the general extraversion, he does truly understand Schubert on something not unlike Schubert's terms. He was operating without the context which later pianists drew from the light he shed. If a player from a later generation played like this, it would simply feel less in tune with the Schubertian spirit - whether because of the improvements in sound, or from the fact that Schnabel was creating the most Schubertian conception of barely known music that anyone knew how to make in 1930. A-
  Rudolf Serkin: Poetry is something almost too pedestrian for the loftiness of St. Rudolf, patron saint of Very Serious Pianists around the world. Schnabel gets through the first movement in about 60% the amount of time it takes Serkin - admittedly in part because of the exposition repeat. The middle movements are taken at quite a clip. There are worse things than a very slow tempo, if Klemperer ever played this sonata, it would sound something like this. Serkin rarely even permits himself something so indulgent as rubato. Everything is played utterly straight-ahead with a tone that perfumes absolutely nothing. The loud moments are thankfully never too loud, the soft moments are 'thankfully' never too soft. Serkin ensures that we hear Schubert through an x-ray, and as the performance goes on, it intermittently casts its own kind of spell. It's not exactly an enchanting performance, but an illuminating one all the same. B
  Grigory Sokolov: Grisha, the recluse, the legend, the alleged 'Greatest Living Pianist.' Does he live up to his storied reputation? Well, this all feels very like Schumann in 'Eusebius' mode, or perhaps even 'Russian.' Stoicism and understatement is not the name of the game here, emotional extravagence is. And yet Sokolov clearly feels the music very deeply. There is no extravagent virtuoso display except in the very final moment of the whole sonata - something Sokolov could toss off in his sleep were he so inclined. If Serkin is all austerity and angular sounds - like a small Protestant Church, then Sokolov is all solemnity and beautiful sounds - like an ostentatious cathedral. Sokolov offers it all up at extremely slow tempos, and doesn't even allow himself to play the particularly poetic passages out of time. I don't know of a longer performance - a full 44 1/2 minutes in a sonata a few pianists polish off in less than 35. Does it work? Unfortunately not, the music sort of lies comatose on the floor, but it is clearly the work of a real artist trying his best with a work he doesn't at all understand. I feel guilty rating this so low since there is clearly so much emotional vulnerability in this playing, but I don't really feel like I have much choice in the matter either. C
  Andreas Staier: I was looking forward to this performance. There's a lot by Staier that is very good, but this is truly abysmal. Of all the weird makes of period pianos, he chooses one that sounds like a Fischer Price toy piano, and brings no insights to bare on this work, no expressive nuance, no sense of this work as anything but a showcase for a really bad piano. Abysmal in every way. F-
  Mitsuko Uchida: Surely Mitsuko was always one of the more interesting of the 'serious' sort, and she's the only pianist who truly seems to learn the lessons of Brendel: play all that delicate poetry for all its worth, don't distend the forte passages into something more bravura than they are, never let the tone of the instrument be too percussive to detract from the songfulness, and never let the singing become too all-pervasive that the piece stops dancing. It's all a little too disproportionate - hyperactive and limpid when its fast - Mozartian perhaps, too lingering and romantic in the slow sections - Chopinesque? But Mozart and Chopin are much closer in spirit to Schubert than Beethoven and Liszt. Schubertland has clear skies and a bright sun when Mitsuko takes us through. It's not the whole story, there's a lot more darkness in Schubertia than Mitsuko tells us about, but it's much more of it than many can tell. A-