Schubert piano pieces from 78s

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Early Grey
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For those of you that will happily sit down for an hour and a half of Schubert's piano music I offer this assemblage admittedly not in the highest of hi-fi. Having processed several piano/orchestral works recently I found that my collection contained three of the pianists playing Schubert pieces so here they are strung together in a sort of "Recital".
The programme is :

1. Artur Schnabel: Moment Musicaux, Op. 90 No.1 in C major, No.2 in A flat major, No.3 in F minor,
No.4 in C sharp minor, No.5 in F minor and No.6 in A flat major

2. Lili Kraus: Sonata in A minor Op.(posth)143 (D.784)

3. EdwinFischer: Impromptus, Op.90 Nos 2 in E flat major and 3 in G major ,
Opus 142 No.3 in B flat major

4. Artur Schnabel: Sonata in A major (D.959)

As regards the quality, the Moments and Impromptu have the odd blemish as befits very popular recordings of their day. However the two sonatas have been played a lot less and have come up very well ( I hope you will think). The Fischer is playing as I write, pretty close to LP quality I would say.
 I had a listen to a couple of youtube performances of the A minor sonata and found that the curse of modern piano playing, (over-)pedalling, had ruined them for me. I find Lili Kraus' playing much less muddy. 

The A major Sonata is an amazing work. High points for me are the chromatic nature of much of it, the way the repeated first melody of the slow movement is transformed by altering the supporting chords with a pedal bass note, the dancing chords of the Scherzo and the contrasting sections of the last movement which sort of stutters to an end. There is an interesting section at the end of the first movement where there are a series of fragments are linked by held notes and just before the end the penultimate phrase embodies a rise of a semitone but the following phrase subsides back to the home key as if completely knackered. This recording came in an Album with those marvellous analytical notes. The trouble is that the excerpts from the score only show how Schnabel, like so many great interpeters, ignores some of the markings that the pedantic pianist might think ought to be observed. I'll not bore you with details.
It seems to be the case that much older recordings are not of any great interest to contributors to this forum but if you decide to give this music a go you'll find it at
http://www.cliveheathmusic.co.uk/transcriptions_07.php

PS my thanks to those who suggested some Pierre Monteux recordings. I have greatly enjoyed the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano with John Ogden, the Enigma coupled with Dvorak 7 and am looking forward to Daphnis and Chloe. I already had  Tchaikovsky's 5th (Boston SO) and Sibelius 2nd (London SO) which I can recommend in return.   

 

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clive heath