Barry Douglas - Schubert: Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 3 (2018)

Barry Douglass Schubert series has reached Volume 3 with this unique programme, featuring two of the composers masterpieces as well as two ingenious transcriptions of his Lieder by his friend and admirer Liszt. Occasionally echoing Beethovens Variations in the same key (WoO 80), the Sonata in C minor melts into one of Schuberts most daring, lyrical, and unpredictable developments, alternating unexpected harmonic variations, pulsating rhythms, and purely dramatic passages. With no sort of organic unity or cyclic intent across the set, the late Six Moments musicaux display many of Schuberts compositional elements: from the elegant and the folkloristic to the pathetic and the anxious. The album ends in homage, with two arrangements by Liszt, paying tribute to the melodic and harmonic detail of Schuberts music, and creating new, busy, and varied textures from Schuberts ingredients, finally unleashing the resources of the virtuoso to convey the poets (and composers) metaphysical exaltation.