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NX 4135
Schubert: Rarities & Short Piano Works
Label Catalogue Number:
8.574135
8.574135
Running Time: 01:09:02
Release Date: August 2021
Originally recorded in 2020
Originally recorded in 2020
Genre:
Classical
Piano
Classical
Piano
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About
Among Schubert’s compositions are rare and overlooked works for solo piano that reflect staging posts of his short compositional life. As a boy he had studied with Salieri who almost certainly encouraged him to explore contrapuntal techniques in 1812 – the fugues and fugal expositions he wrote are testament to his secure grounding in the form. Schubert’s admiration for Mozart is clear in the Fantasy in C minor, while the substantial Two Scherzi, D. 593 show early mastery. Also included is the Allegro in E major, Schubert’s first, unfinished attempt at a piano sonata. Pianist Wojciech Waleczek recorded Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques etreligieuses, Vol. 53 of the Complete Piano Music series on 8.573773.Gramophone wrote: ‘He is sufficiently technically equipped to allow his imagination full flight. He has a strong dramatic instinct and brings a sense of proportion when Liszt grows discursive. Perhaps most importantly, Waleczek conveys an aura of rapture to this music.’
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Reviews
“Fascinating, rarely heard Schubert, played with impeccable taste and fluency by a superb pianist … this is a very interesting release and I would like to hear Mr. Waleczek in some of the other twenty-one Schubert sonatas, as he clearly has the right temperament for performing the music. I feel that he would also be perfectly suited to some of Liszt’s numerous Schubert transcriptions.”
Jonathan Welsh – MusicWeb-International.com – 31 March 2022
“…While fragments from the composer’s early student fugues form the bulk of these pieces, Schubert in any form is worth listening to. Especially in the hands of so sensitive a pianist… quite a bargain when we consider repertory, quality of performances, excellence of sound, and thorough notes. You will not be disappointed.”
Alan Becker – American Record Guide – March/April 2022
“… Thanks to the outstanding pianist and Schubert interpreter Wojciech Waleczek, even the simplest pieces become artful. Waleczek manages to concentrate entirely on the essentials and he accepts the music as it is. And with a little trick – he plays the works with a strong bass foundation and generous pedal – he gives them space and character. Then suddenly they are no longer timid, one-dimensional miniatures, but strong, straightforward and highly entertaining pieces that should really be heard. Wojciech Waleczek’s playing is so rousing and committed that it is a pure joy to experience all these scherzos, fugues, and piano pieces. A special treat is the overture to Alfonso and Estrella, which virtuosically concludes this 70-minute homage to Schubert.” – Guy Engels
“… Wojciech Waleczek presents us a whole program full of surprises, Schubert compositions, some of which are now available on CD for the first time. The short fugues, scherzos, marches, the Fantaisie in C major show us that Franz Schubert was a kind of musical volcano, a composer whose soul was full to bursting with music just waiting to erupt… Wojciech Waleczek does not even attempt to tame this wealth of ideas, to force them into orderly channels. He gets involved with the music, with Schubert’s love of composing, from which the pure joy of life radiates.” - Alain Steffen
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Pizzicato.lu – 30 August 2021
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