| Daniel Barenboim | Piano |
Daniel Barenboim continues his cycle of Schubert piano sonatas with 'a ghost dance' and other delights.
Schubert's amazing ability to change mood and direction in an instant - yet maintain a compelling sense of expressive unity - is especially potent in D.575. The sonata is tellingly cast in the emotionally ambivalent key of B major.
Considered by Robert Schumann to be the 'most perfect in form and conception' of the sonatas, D.894 possesses a sense of wonderment and serenity. It brings to mind pianist Arthur Schnabel's awestruck assessment of Schubert as 'the composer closest to God'.
Turn the coin over and in D.958, cast in Beethoven's favourite minor key, one encounters a lacerating dramatic power climaxing in a hell-for-leather finale that the Chilean virtuoso Claudio Arrau described as a 'ghost-dance, full of sadness, restlessness and anxiety.'
