Philippe Cassard - Schubert: Piano Sonatas, D. 845 & D. 850 (2020) [Hi-Res]

For the pianist Philippe Cassard, with Franz Schubert (1797-1828) “Music buried a precious treasure, but yet far fairer hopes,” to quote the poet Grillparzer’s epitaph.

After his earlier benchmark recordings of the composer, the French pianist flings himself body and soul into this new odyssey and gives us a lesson in lyricism and elegance.

Here are two vast and diametrically opposed sonatas composed a few months apart, in 1825. The first, in A minor, is dominated by the anxiety, harshness and vehemence of the discourse, the vigour of the rhythms. It foreshadows the dark ideas of Schumann’s Kreisleriana. And yet, in some of the variations of the slow movement, we seem to be at the heart of a Viennese salon with couples of dancers swirling around.

In the summer of 1825, Schubert left Vienna for a hike through the landscape of the Salzkammergut, with its high mountains, alpine pastures, lakes and deep valleys. The Sonata D850 radiates his almost childlike joy, his physical and sensory exultation in the midst of nature. In the four movements, he sublimates the sounds of cowbells, the popular songs and dances of the villages he passes through and yodelling motifs and celebrates - in a state close to ecstasy - his arrival at the foot of the imposing Untersberg.