★★★★★
Both Schumann's F sharp minor and F minor Sonatas are flawed works, though full of inspired music. Bernd Glemser establishes a new standard in sympathetic thoughtfulness and persuades us that in both sonatas virtues far outweigh faults.
I listened to this recording just after hearing Kissin play the F sharp minor Sonata in London, and I must say Glemser could teach Kissin a thing or two about the overall design of the outer movements, in which he balances the contrast between dynamic and...
- www.classical-music.com
2015-10-30
★★★★★
No one can say that 's journey through isn't thorough enough. This is the ninth instalment out of a projected 15, in what will be the most complete survey of this hugely important body of keyboard music ever released. Uhlig is including all the different versions of works such as the Davidsbündlertänze, the Symphonic Studies and the F minor Sonata and, similarly, in this latest collection of music composed in 1838, he is including not just the familiar 13 pieces that Schumann published as...
- www.theguardian.com
2015-10-02
★★★★★
his is the second in a three-part series exploring Schumann's concertos and piano trios on gut strings and a period piano, and as the slightly creepy cover photo spells out - shadows of violinist and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras flank like lurking henchmen - it is the pianist's turn to shine. Melnikov is a steely player with plenty of ideas and charisma, but even in the finessed company of the Freiburg Baroque and conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, his bracing account of the Piano Concerto is hard to...
- www.theguardian.com
2015-07-31
★★★★★
, and begin their project to record all of Schumann's concertos and piano trios using gut strings and a piano of Schumann's time (a Streicher of 1847) with the most challenging two works of all. The tangled performance history of the Violin Concerto is well enough known by now - written in 1853 for Joseph Joachim to play, it was suppressed after Schumann's death and not performed in public until the 1930s...
- www.theguardian.com
2015-03-20
★★★★★
hough the fluency and directness of his playing had already marked him out as a pianist to watch, it was winning the Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition in Brussels two years ago that really kick-started 's career. He has already released a couple of discs for the Orchid label (sonatas by Rachmaninov, Grieg and Liszt, and Prokofiev's three war sonatas), but this all-Schumann recital is the first in a series he will make for Naxos...
- www.theguardian.com
2015-02-20
★★★★★
fter for Piano Classics, has been given the chance to show that he is much more than one-trick virtuoso pony with this Schumann collection. Only one of the works here, the Humoreske Op 20, is heard at all often in recitals, while the F minor Sonata, sometimes called Concerto Without Orchestra, is by some distance the least-often performed of Schumann's three sonatas. It's certainly a problematic piece...
- www.theguardian.com
2014-12-18
★★★★★
ompleted early in 1838, 's eight Novelletten form the biggest and arguably the most challenging of his piano cycles. They represent the composer at his most restless: most of the pieces are dark-hued scherzos and the predominant mood is one of extreme alienation, from which moments of respite seem illusory or brief. The demands of sustaining the strenuous emotional pitch over the work's 50-minute span are such that it's rarely performed whole, either in concert or on disc...
- www.theguardian.com
2014-11-14
★★★★★
Not a detail missing ... Robin Ticciati. Photograph: Rob Scott/REX Robin Ticciati's Schumann cycle is the third complete set to appear in the last six months, following Yannick Nézet-Séguin's version with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe for Deutsche Grammophon and Simon Rattle's with the Berlin Philharmoniker on the orchestra's own label...
- www.theguardian.com
2014-09-18
★★★★★
Leon McCawley's self-effacing musicianship and luminous tonal refinement were evident in his earlier two-disc Schumann set on Avie. Here his expressive directness and unfussily supple phrasing is especially effective in Kinderszenen. He eschews self-indulgence - perhaps slightly under-egging the beautiful 'Träumerei' - and yet beneath the surface there is plenty going on, small details of voicing and phrasing and little emphases that speak more on repeated listening...
- www.classical-music.com
2014-08-16
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