Piano Sonata No 20 D959 / Four Impromptus

Piano Sonata No 20 D959 / Four Impromptus cover $20.00 Out of Stock
6+ weeks
add to cart

SCHUBERT
Piano Sonata No 20 D959 / Four Impromptus
Alain Planas (piano)

[ Harmonia Mundi Musique d'abord / CD ]

Release Date: Saturday 20 August 2005

This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.

***** Five Stars (Pick of the Month) BBC Music Magazine (Dec 2001)

"Alain Planès proves himself as adept with Schubert as he is with Debussy. Indeed, this is one of the most satisfying recordings of the big Sonata in A, worthy of standing with those by Schnabel, Serkin, Brendel, and Kovacevich. The structural projection is clear throughout, with just the right amount of forward momentum...The combined control of touch, pedal, and dynamics in the concluding bars of the first movement (Sonata in A D 959) produces a wash of pastel sound that is quite magical in effect."
- Fanfare

"Alain Planès is at his best in the A major Sonata's tender, inwardlooking moments, catching something of Schubert's otherworldly atmosphere."
- BBC Music Magazine

'Happiness on the edge of the abyss.' Composed in the year of his death, Schubert's twenty-second and penultimate Piano Sonata is one of those masterpieces in which the composer seems to have found complete serenity. It is the most elaborately developed sonata he ever wrote, and it is also the most closely related to the Four Impromptus, Op. 142, written a few months before and which his publisher thought were too difficult for bagatelles! It is true that in spite of their sublime freshness, these marvellous pieces go far beyond mere bagatelles.

Tracks:

Sonate No. 20 [22] D959
Quatre Impromptus D935, Op. posth. 142