Miraculous recordings from a great master

 Wilhelm Kempff: Bach, Mozart, Schubert & Schumann

This welcome historic release from APR Recordings includes Wilhelm Kempff's complete recordings for Polydor of music by Bach, Mozart, Schubert and Schumann, made in the period 1927 to 1936. We have here nearly 75 minutes of music, which together make for an appealing recital.

Indeed, though I know Kempff primarily through his recordings of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, I would find almost anything the great pianist plays to be appealing. But there's something special about these recordings, something quite miraculous. In spite of the relatively primitive technology involved in these early electrical recordings, I had no trouble at all forgetting sonic imperfections, and zeroing in on a great master channeling great composers. The French Suite no. 5 of Bach, recorded in 1935, is the highlight of the disc; it's a masterful interpretation. I was in awe of this from the first time I heard it, since I had the strong feeling that Kempff was communicating his own awe, as he so often does with Beethoven, before a great masterwork.

I was quite surprised by Kempff's interpretation of Mozart's Piano Sonata in A major, K. 331, recorded in 1935. It seems much more modern than I would have expected, with crisp, carefully delineated lines, and no hint of the romanticizing prettiness that plagued Mozart music of the period. While not completely Historically Informed, this performance once again demonstrates a real, personal connection between pianist and composer.

There are a number of Kempff transcriptions here, including some Bach pieces that have entered the repertoire of many pianists, and a very clever reworking of Liszt's version of Schubert's "Hark, Hark, the Lark!". The disc ends with a beautiful dream: Schumann's Träumerie, recorded in 1936.

I've characterized the piano playing of Wilhelm Kempff as a miracle, but there's another, albeit smaller, miracle involved in this release. It's quite amazing that one can listen to all of this music with little acoustic worries. That's a testament to the state-of-the-art German engineering behind the recordings themselves, but also, of course to work since then by the Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer for this project, Mark Obert-Thorn. The many years between recording and listening seem simply to vanish.

Stephen Siek's liner essay is first-rate, mixing in technical details, but making sure that storytelling prevails. Learning about Kempff's 1934 trip to Buenos Aires on the Graf Zeppelin adds a great deal to the charm of the entire project.

This disc will be released March 4, 2022.

Another brilliant musical document from post-war Berlin

Quartetto Italiano: The Complete RIAS Recordings

The Quartetto Italiano was the first of the new post-war groups that inaugurated a new golden age of String Quartets: the Quartetto Italiano was formed in 1945, the Juilliard String Quartet and LaSalle Quartet in 1946, and the Janáček and Amadeus quartets in 1947. Audite here brings us three CDs worth of fabulous recordings for RIAS ("Radio in the American Sector" of Berlin). The RIAS studios were excellent, and their engineers highly accomplished, so we have (as with the Amadeus Quartet album I reviewed late last year) an excellent idea of how these musicians sounded, in this case between 1951 to 1963. The group's repertoire is interesting, especially considering the period: Donizetti, Malipiero and Cherubini provide an Italian antipasto, if I may be permitted a metaphor (pun!) in questionable taste (taste!). Their 1959 Ravel interpretation is searching, and sometimes fierce; maybe even more so than their late recordings of core repertoire. This is a standout performance, though it's perhaps less than Gallic. The early String Quartet no. 8 by Schubert, from 1963, has the characteristic QI sound of their studio recordings of the Viennese masters: it's taut and tight and intense, eschewing sentimentality and emphasizing structure over story-telling. The first of the Haydn String Quartets op. 77 is the earliest recording here, from 1951. It's sunnier and more fun (to listen to, and I expect, to play) than the more disciplined Haydn the Quartetto Italiano developed later in their recording career. These recordings are at a higher level in both sonics and interpretation than your average historic releases, and the excellent documentation and the fact that a number of the works have never been released, make this a must-listen for chamber music fans.

This album will be released on May 3, 2019.

A thought-provoking & satisfying first album

Can Çakmur: piano music by Beethoven/Liszt, Haydn, Schubert, Say, Sasaki, Bartok

After the artificial rigours of the international piano competition world, Can Çakmur (who won in Glasgow in 2017, and in Hamamatsu in 2018) now has a chance to build an interesting, exciting programme for his first recording. His opener is an inspired choice: Franz Liszt's arrangement of Beethoven's song Adelaïde, an arresting piece that alternates between sentiment and all-out flash. Of course we want virtuosity in this situation, and it's here in spades, but in the long-term we're on the look-out for musical intelligence, style and staying power. On the evidence of this album we should be listening to the Ankara-born pianist for a very long time.

Çakmur plays Schubert's E-flat major Sonata D. 568, from 1817 when he was only 20, with wit and delicacy. He doesn't add any anachronistic darkness to the slow movement - the bulk of the composer's agonies are years ahead at this point - but lets the simple sad post-adolescent clouds drift through in their quiet way. The more sophisticated and brilliant F minor Variations by Haydn seem at first deceptively slight, but they are the centrepiece of the album; this is a profound work that Çakmur gives a suitable gravitas and quiet dignity. Fazil Say's Black Earth adapts a folk song by Turkish minstrel Aşık Veysel, complete with the sound of the lute-like instrument the bağlama, approximated by pressing on the piano strings while playing notes on the keyboard. This is an arresting piece that combines piano technique and folklore in an appealing way. Çakmur stays in the world of imitative folk music with Bartok's percussive Out of Doors, and brings his first album to a moving conclusion with Fuyuhiko Sasaki's Sacrifice. This is a complex work with references to Christian theology, to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, to Bach's St. Matthew Passion, and to Andrei Tarkovsky's final film, The Sacrifice, from 1986. What a thought-provoking and satisfying first album!

High above, on a better star

Heimweh: Schubert Lieder

From Pentatone Classics comes this very special package, with an amazing cover photo by Julia Wesely, the profound musical concept and an arresting liner notes essay by Anna Lucia Richter, and the gorgeous music making of Richter, pianist Gerold Huber and clarinettist Matthias Schorn. Not to forget the greatest song-writer in history, Franz Schubert, a brilliant curator of poetry and the ultimate melder of words and music.

"We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange," says Carson McCullers. "As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known." The German words for these two feelings are Heimweh, a kind of homesickness, and Hinausweh, or wanderlust. Schubert, a master of the emotional landscape as much as the musical one, weaves strands of both throughout his songs, and Richter has gathered some of the best for this project. We begin with the heartbreaking simplicity of An den Mond, D. 259, a Goethe setting from 1815. In her liner notes Doris Blaich calls Heimweh, D. 456, from the following year, "one long musical sigh." The lyrics, by Theodor Hell, are a special expression of nostalgic feelings.

Often, in quiet, solitary hours,
I have experienced a feeling,
inexplicable, marvellous,
like a yearning for the far distance,
high above, on a better star,
like a soft presentiment.

Schubert turns the emotional level way up in the late Totengräbers Heimwehe, D. 842, a setting of Jakob Nikolaus from 1825. In this song "The stars vanish – My eyes close in death," an unflinching look into the abyss!

The programme ends with Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, D. 965, a melding of two poems by Wilhelm Müller and Karl August Varnhagen, written in October 1828. This concert aria shifts the spotlight from the relatively intimate lieder to something which points to a more theatrical future, which alas was not to be. The song was published posthumously, after the composer died that November.

My sweetheart lives so far from me,
Therefore, I long so to be with her
Over there.

Music wouldn't be the same without this yearning, from the lonesome cowboy to the saudade of Fado and Tom Jobim, from singin' the blues to Judy Garland's yearning for home in The Wizard of Oz. This album is a distinguished addition to the genre.




This disc will be released on February 1, 2019.

Sad stories about death and dying

Shostakovich: String Quartet no. 8; Schubert: String Quartet no. 14

A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token.

 - Mark Rothko

Masterpieces meet at Sothebys: Rothko's Untitled (Yellow & Blue), 1954 and Van Gogh's L'Allee des Alyscamps, 1888
📷 Mary Turner, 2015

Matching two or more works from different eras is a tried-and-true programming trick for concerts or recordings, which works often enough that I would never want to see it fall out of favour. A stellar example is the Aris Quartett's new disc, with sparks flying back and forth between Shostakovich and Schubert, both of whom show an intensity of feeling belied by the often calm surfaces of their string quartets. The one work calls to the other, like a Rothko and a Van Gogh hung together, yellows reflecting off each other, and blues pulling each together. The concept works best, of course, with two masterpieces masterfully played. The Aris players, quite correctly, I think, play the Shostakovich first. It's a harrowing mash-up of all sorts of horrors: historical (it's dedicated to the "victims of fascism and the war"), political (coming after the composer's humiliating forced membership in the Communist party), and personal (he had recently experienced the first symptoms of what was eventually diagnosed as ALS). In spite of all of this the 8th Quartet is one of Shostakovich's best known and popular works, both in its original form and in Rudolf Barshai's transcription for string orchestra as the Chamber Symphony op. 110a. The 14th Quartet of Schubert, named for his song "Death and the Maiden" was also written in response to a health crisis, and Schubert's own knowledge of his impending death, and it too contains music of surpassing beauty.

The intense feelings of both of these works create both tensions and release, within each piece and between the two. Set in this frame, these fine musicians tell us incredibly sad stories about death and dying in the 19th and the 20th centuries. I felt privileged to hear these stories again and again as I listened to this album, every time hearing new facets of sadness, anger and the comforts of beauty and love. This is a significant achievement for Genuin and the Aris Quartett.

Defying the darkness of the unknown

Schubert: Symphony no. 5; Brahms: Serenade no. 2

In his Book of Friends Hugo von Hofmannsthal says "Joy requires more devotion, more courage than sorrow. Joy enjoins one to submit, precisely so far as to defy the darkness of the unknown." It's this joy that we hear over and over again in John Eliot Gardner's great recordings of Bach. He talks in his great book Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven about "the festive joy and zest of this dance-impregnated music," and it's this zest that comes out in this new Schubert/Brahms disc recorded at a concert in The Concertgebouw on November 12, 2016.

It's perhaps easy enough to bring out the joyful side of Schubert's lovely 5th Symphony, which contains more beautiful melodies than some composers produce in a lifetime. Gardiner treats this very much as a classical work, which makes sense considering how much Schubert was in the thrall of Mozart at the time. That both Schubert and Mozart suffered in their lives more than the average composer makes this music even more miraculous; it truly does "defy the darkness of the unknown."

The two Brahms Serenades also come from a dark time, just following the death of Robert Schumann. As much as I love Brahms, I've never really taken to either of these works, but not because of any life circumstances. Rather, they both suffer a bit from being preparatory works for Brahms's symphonies to come. It's too calculated a move, I think, for such slight material. Gardiner gives it his best shot, as do his marvellous musicians, but the music doesn't really take off like the Schubert does, and furthermore it suffers from coming right after such a perfect piece. At the concert at The Concertgebouw the Brahms led off the evening, and the Schubert was the last work, following Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto with Kristian Bezuidenhout. Still, serviceable Brahms and perfect Schubert still make for an entertaining and joyful hour of music.

This disc will be released on August 31, 2018.

Schubert in the style of Kubrick

Franz Schubert: Piano Trios, D. 929 and D. 897

"A Trio by Schubert passed across the musical world like some angry comet in the sky," wrote Robert Schumann, and his brilliant hyperbole manages somehow to seriously under-sell this amazing work, the second Piano Trio, D. 929, written in Schubert's penultimate year. It's angry and powerful, yes, but it's so much more than that. The full musical and emotional range and ambiguity of this extraordinary work of genius becomes clear after listening a number of times to this superb new disc from the Danish group Trio Vitruvi. The group uses the Bärenreiter Urtext edition of the work, which contains additional material not included in the version published in 1828 (which was incidentally the only publication of any of his works outside of Austria during the composer's lifetime). And their passionate, controlled performance contains all of the musical innovation and emotional nuance that Schubert had developed in a lifetime as a composer, short as it was.

A digression: the second movement Andante con moto was used by Stanley Kubrick in his 1975 film Barry Lyndon. This is one of the greatest uses of classical music in all cinema.



"I think", says Kubrick in a revealing interview with Michel Ciment, "that silent films got a lot more things right than talkies".  This scene is a perfect example. One of the many extraordinary things about it is Kubrick's long, slow build-up to the kiss. Kubrick has his own "heavenly lengths", the phrase Mendelssohn coined when talking about Schubert. How many directors could have kept our interest in such a simple scene for a full four minutes? Best of all is Ryan O'Neill's determined little march in the courtyard to embrace Marisa Berenson, in time to Schubert and reminiscent of all the marching to war that's taken place in the film.

MC: Did you have Schubert's Trio in mind while preparing and shooting this particular scene?

SK: No, I decided on it while we were editing. Initially, I thought it was right to use only eighteenth-century music. But sometimes you can make ground-rules for yourself which prove unnecessary and counter-productive. I think I must have listened to every LP you can buy of eighteenth-century music. One of the problems which soon became apparent is that there are no tragic love-themes in eighteenth-century music. So eventually I decided to use Schubert's Trio in E Flat, Opus 100, written in 1828. It's a magnificent piece of music and it has just the right restrained balance between the tragic and the romantic without getting into the headier stuff of later Romanticism.

Schubert and Kubrick both do something quite wonderful with the main theme of the Andante, which is based on the Swedish folk song Se solen sjunker (The sun is down).  The composer brings back this music in his final movement, and the director does the same in his:



Though he was only 31 when he died, Schubert's own awareness of his likely demise in the late 1820s resulted, I think, in a kind of late style. His profound understanding of human relationships, musical innovation (both Beethoven's and his own), and issues relating to death and dying had much to do, I believe, with his lifelong connection to poetry and the development of the German lied, so much of which came from Schubert himself. As early as 1822 he wrote this about "My Dream":

For many and many a year I sang songs. Whenever I tried to sing of love, it turned to pain. And again, when I tried to sing of pain, it turned to love.

Ian Bostridge uses this as an epigraph for his marvellous book Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession. It's telling that such a broad range of scholarship and deep understanding by a great performer and academic should be required to do justice to a single work of Schubert's, his song cycle Winterreise, which was published the same year as the 2nd Piano Trio. It's impressive that the young musicians of Trio Vitruvi have made such a strong case for the latter work in its original form, uncut and undiluted. It's a positively Kubrickian performance.

This disc will be released on April 20, 2018.

Listening to Schubert with the proper spirit of reverence and appreciation

Franz Schubert: Symphonies no. 2 & 5

What a bright and long-burning genius was Franz Schubert, partially obscured though he was by the Great Genius Beethoven. Schubert had an intensity that belied his lack of personal charisma when placed against the larger-than-life 19th century masters. His songs and his piano sonatas are obviously at the very pinnacle of greatness, but when it comes to Schubert's orchestral music it's the earlier, slighter symphonies I love to listen to (not counting the Unfinished Symphony, of course, which is both great and loveable). This is something I expect is fairly common; there's something about Schubert and his music that inspires this kind of love. I was enjoying listening to this clear, bright, thoughtful recording from Antwerp while reading Deborah Solomon's fabulous biography of the artist Joseph Cornell, Utopia Parkway, and saw that Cornell shared this Schubert love:

Cornell's latest fascination was with Franz Schubert, one of many composers who glowed with a special incandescence in his imagination.... Cornell's records meant so much to him that sometimes he couldn't even bring himself to open them. After acquiring a set of recordings of Schubert's Trio in E Flat, Cornell noted in his diary: 'I await the proper moment to unfold its loveliness and enjoy it in the proper spirit of reverence and appreciation it deserves.'

I highly recommend this disc from Maestro Herreweghe, and further recommend that when you buy it you go ahead and open it, or load the MP3s on your computer or phone or whatever, and listen. You'll love it.

Visualizations add emotional depth to a great Winterreise

Franz Schubert: Winterreise [Amazon.ca link]

Matthias Goerne's searching, haunted Winterreise has always been special, whether his supporting partner is Alfred Brendel, Christopher Eschenbach or, as here, Markus Hinterhauser. A new dimension is added in this splendid Blu-ray, the visualizations of artist and film-maker William Kentridge. Kentridge's monochromatic animations, stripped down, sophisticated versions of the great experimental films of the surrealists and Canada's National Film Board, are so evocative. They add context and emotional depth to the story Wilhelm Müller and Schubert tell in this song cycle. To be sure, the interpretation by Goerne and Hinterhauser stands alone in its greatness, but Kentridge's images add a dimension of no small artistic import as well.

Here is an excerpt from the disc:

A fascinating programme, beautifully performed

The Great Fugue: music for two pianos & one piano four hands, by Schumann, Schubert, Mozart & Beethoven

Pianists Izabella Simon and Denes Varjon have built a really interesting program from a very solid base, a convincing and accomplished performance of Beethoven's own four hand transcription of the Great Fugue, originally the finale to his op. 130 String Quartet. Each of the pieces that precede the Beethoven is original and well worth listening to in its own right, and not just as a build-up to the main event. I had never heard Robert Schumann's Six Canonic Etudes, Op. 56, in Debussy's version for two pianos, but these are really delightful character pieces with plenty of charm and, well, character. Schubert packs a lot into the Allegro in A minor he wrote late in life: a poignant, sentimental soft centre surrounded by a crunchy, mock-serious coating. More delightful music, and played with especially apt energy, subtlety and style by these two fine pianists. The Mozart Fugue, K. 401, is one of the works that the composers wrote in response to his serious encounter with the contrapuntal music of J.S. Bach, and as it proceeds in its sombre way it's clear that Mozart has struck a deeply personal vein that he would go on to explore in his last decade, in his Great Mass and Requiem, and the most serious passages in his mature operas. This is a highly recommended release, both for its original repertoire and for the fine, assured playing.

A marvellous performance let down by technology

Schubert, Die Winterreise, DVD

This DVD is a reissue of a highly-praised film from German Television of a 1979 performance by Fischer-Dieskau and Alfred Brendel in the Siemensvilla in Berlin. It definitely shows its age, with low definition video and audio that's fine but shows neither brilliance nor bloom. This is a shame, because the great baritone's slight loss in vocal quality from his salad days in the 1960s is more than made up for in his dramatic presence. HD video would have showed that off beautifully, whereas now you have to squint a little to see his expressions. On the plus side, TV director Klaus Lindemann has staged this with admirable restraint and dignity, and he keeps camera movement to a minimum. The focus is on Schubert's powerful music and on Fischer-Dieskau's portrayal of Wilhelm Müller's sombre protagonist. Of course, Alfred Brendel's musical contribution is immediately and continuously apparent. There are subtitles (in English, German, French, Spanish & Italian) for the songs, but unfortunately not for the 56 minute Rehearsal documentary. This looks absolutely fascinating, but alas, I don't understand German!

Illuminating, moving musical project

This new disc from Patricia Kopatchinskaja, the leader of the conductor-less Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, is part of the new classical music recording trend of publishing projects built around a music-historical or conceptual theme. In the old days a record company would likely put out Schubert's Death and the Maiden Quartet on an LP coupled with the Trout Quintet, or another popular "named" quartet by another composer. The idea of wrapping a recording around a defining idea bigger than just "recital" or "concert" wasn't often on the radar in the LP era. This was perhaps because of format limitations: each 20-25 minute side happened to fit a chamber music work, or half of a romantic symphony, and the format pointed to a certain kind of conventional content.

This is different. Kopatchinskaja takes the idea of "Death and the Maiden", which began as a poem by Matthias Claudius, set as a song by Schubert in 1817, and makes it the basis of a fascinating 70 minutes of music. By the time Schubert wrote his String Quartet, which uses the song's great melody as the theme of its Andante second movement, he was facing death during a major health crisis in 1824. The various musical sources brought in for this project, from medieval chant to the avant garde, all speak to this consciousness of what is coming. Then each source, from widely varying musical beginnings, is adapted for a common platform, the string orchestra. The Schubert arrangements are by Kopatchinskaja herself. Pieces by Dowland, Kurtag, Gesualdo, Normiger and an anonymous Byzantine chant provide historical and emotional context for Schubert's masterwork. This is an illuminating, moving project.

This Alpha Classics disc will be released on October 28, 2016.

Geniality and wit; virtuosity and passion

Sir Andras Schiff plays and conducts masterworks of Beethoven, Schubert and Mozart in this outstanding Blu-ray from C-major, filmed at the Great Hall of the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation in January of 2015. His boundless charm is the keynote of the whole project, which is evident in this short clip:


It's almost, but not quite, too cute sometimes. I love the way he leans back after finishing a run to the top of the keyboard in the Beethoven Concerto, and gives a cue over his shoulder to the concert-master. I love the way he mimics playing a wind instrument to get the perfect sound from his flutes and oboes. But underneath the geniality and wit is an astounding virtuosity, a complete grasp of the underlying meaning of this music, and an ability to communicate with the hand-picked instrumentalists of the Cappella Andrea Barca, virtuosi themselves, as perfectly as he communicates with the audience. There's still a big chunk of the year to go, but I know now that this video will end up close to the top of my Top 10 recordings of 2016.

Two great Nupen films

The art of the classical music documentary film is alive and well. I've given very positive reviews to recent films by Marco Capalbo and Eric Schulz. One of the best documentarians of them all, Christopher Nupen, is still going strong; his Daniil Trifonov films were released last year to great acclaim on DVD. 

It's nice to know a bit about how Nupen got where he is now. Luckily Allegro Films is releasing his full catalogue on DVD. In this recent release from Allegro's series The Christopher Nupen Films we have an early masterpiece, The Trout, and the 1994 Schubert documentary The Greatest Love and the Greatest Sorrow.

The Trout is a very special hour of film that represents the happy accident of five young musical superstars-to-be coming together in London, with a young director who, as Pauline Kael said about Robert Altman, "had poetry in him." Nupen had an ace up his sleeve: new silent 16mm cameras that allowed a much more informal (indeed, Altmanesque) filming style. But it's the poetry that seals the deal, not the technology. Here's a short clip that gives a flavour of the film.

The Greatest Love and the Greatest Sorrow isn't as innovative as The Trout. Indeed, it's a standard Ken Burns-style documentary, with voice-over and period paintings and drawings. Two things make it special. The first is the stature of the performances, which are astonishing. I was especially impressed with the fierce quality of Andreas Schmidt in the songs, and the piano artistry of Vladimir Ashkenazy, who provides sensitive accompaniment and an individual way with solo piano works. The second is something that's fairly rare in classical music documentaries, but which drives the whole film. Nupen has a thesis for his film, which he argues forcefully and effectively, against the idea that Schubert died before he reached his full destiny as a composer, and is thus not at the same level as the great masters. A certain level of advocacy is perhaps assumed in classical music documentaries; after all, why make a film at all if the subject hasn't some intrinsic worth. But Nupen's aim is to elevate Schubert to the level of Beethoven, which he emphasizes by beginning the film with Beethoven's funeral (where Schubert was a torch-bearer), and following with the music, letters and stories of the next 20 months that Schubert had to live. I was completely on board with this concept; I've always felt Schubert is, along with Beethoven, the greatest composer for the piano, and is all by himself as the greatest composer of art songs. So it works for me, and if, as they say, your mileage may vary, at least Nupen has provided a cogent argument.

Again, we have a short clip on YouTube to give you an idea of this film, which I highly recommend.

Brisk Franz

Portrait of Franz Schubert, oil on wood by Gábor Melegh, 1827; in the Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

There’s so much pity and sentimentality built-in to the stereotype of Franz Schubert as the short, sad, socially-awkward fellow who died too soon. It blinds us to the passion and vigour and intellectual depth which fills his best music. And these two symphonies undoubtably represent a great achievement, the finest symphonies between Beethoven’s and those of Brahms and Bruckner.

There’s lots to like about Philippe Jordan’s version of this music with his fine Viennese players. The string sound of the Wiener Symphoniker is as silky and sensuous as their colleagues in the Philharmonic. The brass and woodwinds are more than solid, and the rhythmic pulse in both works is strong and alive. But this nimble, agile performance has a bit too much day-at-the-office routine about it. I want more mystery in my Unfinished, and The Great is only Great when it expresses more tension and power. I was coincidentally listening to Giuseppe Sinopoli’s Unfinished (with the Philharmonia Orchestra on a DGG disc from 1994) when the new Jordan review disc arrived in the mail. It has a layer of dramatic tension missing in the new recording. Schubert never got the experience and feedback he needed to develop his operas into masterpieces, but in this symphony he comes up with slow burns and climaxes that would kill on stage. Sinopoli’s mastery in the opera pit gives him a better line on those dramatic impulses than is evident in this highly competent but ultimately unsatisfying recording from Vienna.

A note on numbers: The Unfinished was written in 1822, while The Great was started in 1825 and finished in 1827, the year before Schubert died. So the old-fashioned European numbering as #7 and #8 doesn't make too much sense. We know them over here as #8 and #9, which at least has them in the right order. But I know: it's complicated.