Celebrating Schubert - and the greatest recording artists
Charlotte Smith
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
By any measure of artistic achievement, the music written by Schubert in 1828 is remarkable. That it was the last year of his life makes it all the more astonishing. The F minor Fantasie piano duet, the final three piano sonatas, Schwanengesang, the Mass in E flat, the C major String Quintet – these works feel not so much conclusions to a short but brilliant career but rather hint tantalisingly and tragically at what might have followed. Gramophone critic Richard Wigmore tells the story of Schubert’s final year, discussing those profound masterpieces with some of their most powerful interpreters.
Two of those artists, pianists Alfred Brendel and Mitsuko Uchida, appear among our nominations for the Gramophone Hall of Fame, our new initiative to celebrate the people who have changed the history of classical music recording. We’ve drawn up a list of musicians, producers and executives whose talent, vision and genius have enriched the catalogue from the earliest days of wax cylinders to the digital world of today. Many names – Callas and Caruso, Karajan and Klemperer – you will expect to find; others, many still performing today, may be more of a surprise. We’re asking for your help to decide which 50 will be the first to be welcomed into the Gramophone Hall of Fame. Click here to find out more and to let us have your nominations (voting closes a week or so after the publication of this issue). We’ll reveal the final list in our May issue.
Another wonderful artist is the German violinist Isabelle Faust. Chosen by Gramophone as our Young Artist of the Year back in 1997, she has more than fulfilled our expectations, receiving another Gramophone Award in 2010 for her disc of Beethoven sonatas. It’s Beethoven she returns to this month, to the Violin Concerto, performed with Claudio Abbado and Orchestra Mozart. She pairs it with Berg’s Violin Concerto, which she talks to us about in our Musician and the Score feature. Both are outstanding, characteristically intense performances – and the release is our Recording of the Month.
