Comparison
recordings:
Wilhelm Kempff, D.557,
D.625 ADD DG 423 496-2
With the exception
of Sonata No. 5, all these works are
in some way unfinished or incomplete.
Only Schubert could write so many interesting
"fragments" and few composers
inspire so much interest in their miscellany.
Actually, even sonata No. 5, although
nominally complete as published, suggests,
because the key signatures of the existing
completed movements seem to present
an incomplete cycle of modulations,
that Schubert may have intended to add
another movement in Ab major.
Sonata D.567 only lacks the final page
of the final movement, and the necessary
notes can be supplied from a later version
of the same music. In D.625/505, the
harmonisation is missing from bars 201
to 270, but it can reasonably be constructed
from similar passages earlier in the
movement, not that Schubert wouldn’t
have typically enjoyed playing some
tricks on us if he’d bothered to write
out these bars. That leaves D.613, a
two movement sonata both of whose movements
are unfinished (and are played so on
this recording) to be coupled with D.612
which matches in key signature, thematic
material and mood, to form a three movement
sonata. Although the pianist just stops
playing when Schubert stopped writing,
at the end of D.612/a that is masked
by an immediate segue into D.613 which
is offered as the next movement. At
the end of 612/b, the lack of resolution
at the end of the written music is inconspicuous
enough that I didn’t even notice it
listening through the first time, so
we are spared the distraction of incomplete
music phrases left grotesquely dangling
in mid-air.
These are very fine
recordings of these works, the difference
between this and the genius of Wilhelm
Kempff being mostly a sense of a veil,
previously unnoticed, being drawn aside
allowing a vision into previously unimaginable
landscapes, or perhaps starscapes, as
the case may be. But Kempff, for all
that, is not sylistically the most authentic
performer of Schubert, and for that
reason many may either prefer this recording,
or feel it to be a worthy and favourably-priced
companion to their Kempff collection.
Also it must be noted that Kempff does
not play more than half the music on
this disk in his "complete"
set, which omits sonata numbers and
only refers to Deutsch numbers.
My criterion for good
Chopin playing is that it should occasionally
sound like Schubert. The reverse is
true also: the best Schubert playing
will occasionally remind you that Chopin
was listening and taking notes.
Wallisch’s performances
of Sonatas Nos. 11 and 12 have just
been made available on Naxos 8.557189,
so we may assume that this will eventually
be a complete set of the sonatas and
if the quality of future releases matches
that of this one, it will be a very
fine set, indeed.
Paul Shoemaker
Gottlieb Wallisch, piano 