Search - Franz [Vienna] Schubert, Russell Sherman :: Schubert: Sonata in D Major, D.850; Sonata in B flat Major, D.960

Lovely moments, but this is an overthinker at work

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 02/11/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Russell Sherman is a pianistic god in Boston, but I must admit that I've never caught on why. Here in this Schubert recital he repeatedly distorts the line, adding quirky left-hand accents and niggling bits of rubato that come from a private world I don't understand. I realize that he's reaching for expressive originality and identifies himself with the great tradition of Rpmantic pianists who took many freedoms in their playing.



This has been Sherman's pattern for his entire long career, and what strikes me as idiosyncracy will strike others as intuitively brilliance. Maybe I'm allergic to painists who are also intellectuals. Of those who write beautifully about music -- Alfredh Brendel, Charles Rosen, and Russell Sherman among them -- I hear oerthinking at the keyboard. Only Glenn Gould seemed to have a separate musical self capable of intuitive greatness. The others ae working out ideas, and as a result their emotional range is too limited.



In any eent, whether you agree or disagree, it can be said that Sherman's Schbert is certainly one of a kind."