Search - Franz Schubert, Allan Schiller, John Humphreys :: Schubert: Piano Works for Four Hands, Volume 5

The 'Grand Duo' and Some Minor Works

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 02/07/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Schubert wrote a lot of music for piano four-hands and there have been many recordings of a good bit of it. This is the fifth volume in Naxos's series devoted to Schubert's works in this format, and it contains one of his two best-known works in the form, the so-called 'Grand Duo', the Sonata in C Major, D812, Op. posth. 140. However, unlike the sublime Fantasie in F Minor, the Grand Duo is a work with a few marvelous moments and many longueurs. Say what you like about Schubert's 'heavenly lengths', this work is too long for its materials. It is a long work, about forty minutes, and a musician as perspicacious as Schumann thought it was probably a piano version of a symphony whose orchestration had never been done or had been lost. However, most scholars now believe that this is not the case; the writing is too pianistic for it to be symphonic, according to them. Joseph Joachim even orchestrated it and it is reported that it fails as a symphony. Be that as it may, there is a magnificent recording of the work, the one recorded at a Carnegie Hall concert by Yevgeny Kissin and James Levine, and it leaves the rather bland present version in the dust. Schiller and Humphreys play all the notes but there is not a speck of personality in their playing, at least as compared to Kissin/Levine. I suppose that this version is acceptable -- just -- particularly when one considers its budget price.



Most of the other works here were written at about the same time as the Grand Duo, at a time when Schubert was in residence in the villa of a nobleman who had two piano-playing daughters. And they are relatively minor. The Four Ländler are charming but last a total of less than four minutes. The 'Variations sur un thème original', D813, is, to my mind, pretty forgettable. The theme is irritatingly trivial and Schubert does not transcend that deficit as Beethoven did with the Diabelli Variations. Two of the 'Six Grandes Marches', D819, lasting about fifteen minutes, are interesting and given nice readings here.



If what you are interested in is the 'Grand Duo', I'd suggest you spring for the Kissin/Levine. If the other pieces are what draw you to this issue, you may be repaid by buying the CD.



Scott Morrison"