Schubert: Impromptus, D.899 & D.935 ~ Uchida

Franz [Vienna] Schubert (Composer), Mitsuko Uchida (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Mitsuko Uchida
• Composer: Franz [Vienna] Schubert
• Audio CD (April 15, 1997)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Philips
• ASIN: B0000041N2
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #22,089 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

No Description Available.
Genre: Classical Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 15-APR-1997

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Warm and Free-Spirited Impromptus, January 20, 2001

By 

A Classical Fan "a_new_yorker" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Schubert: Impromptus, D.899 & D.935 ~ Uchida (Audio CD)

Schubert's Impromptus show free-sprited and romantic side of Schubert, and also it is free from the shadow of Beethven, by which Schubert sometimes felt pressured in his piano sonatas. Mitsuko Uchida maximizes this quality without losing spontaneity. Her tone is light and soft, yet it's got an enough weight which intelligently frames each piece. The recording sound of the piano itself is very soft to create more personal atmosphere. There are many great recordings of Schubert Impromptus by such greats as Kempff, Perahia, Brendel, Schiff, Richter etc. Uchida's Impromptu certainly joins these, but with more personal and softer touch than those guys' austere and more objective Impromptus. I strongly recommend this disc to anyone.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Schubert, July 31, 2007

By 

Amy - See all my reviews

This review is from: Schubert: Impromptus, D.899 & D.935 ~ Uchida (Audio CD)

There are quite a few alternatives, too many perhaps, to consider when one is about to chose a recording of Schubert's two sets of impromptus. I have my self five or six, and among these Mitsuko Uchida's addition to my collection is by far the best. Not even the accounts of great Schubert interpreters like Clifford Curzon or Wilhelm Kempff can, in my opinon, compete with Uchida's recording on Philips. In the opening bars of the c-minor impromptu, Uchida raises your expectations to the almost unreasonable, not one note is left without the most careful and nuanced attention. The second impromptu in E flat is the most frustrating for a pianist to encounter, as it so often becomes monotonous in its long wanderings. Although I feel that Uchida is more on familiar ground in the other impromptus, the E flat is never stripped of its dynamic and elegant flow. The impromptu in G flat is my favorite from Schubert, very relaxing to play and listen to. The wonderful Bflat impromptu is another highlight on this disc. The variations over a theme are on one hand given attention on their individual characteristics, but never at the cost of the piece as a whole. There are more than certain traces of Richter's influence here, but nevertheless this is Schubert by way of Mitsuko Uchida.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Uchida excels in this, perhaps her finest Schubert recording, December 16, 2011

By 

Ralph Moore "Ralph operaphile" (Bishop's Stortford, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Schubert: Impromptus, D.899 & D.935 ~ Uchida (Audio CD)

Scanning reviews of Uchida's Schubert, it is possible to glean a good deal of negative comment amidst the praise; she is "self conscious and mannered", "lacks dynamic range" and makes "arbitrary alterations in tempo".

By the same token, certain adjectives recur: "elegant", "fluid" and "lyrical" are favourites - and they certainly apply to this, a recording which seems to have met with widespread recognition as one of her very best. The naturalness, wistfulness and dreamy reveries conjured up here means that Schubert has never sounded so proleptically akin to Chopin. Nor do I hear any narrowness in her use of dynamics, although it is true that she is not a pianist given to the percussive emphases employed by Richter or Sokolov. Other reviewers have commented on her little tick of applying minute, momentary hesitations as an expressive device; although they still occur, they are judiciously and subtly executed.

It is freshly apparent, from the way Uchida interprets D.935, the second set of Impromptus, that she fully buys into Schumann's assertion that it is really another sonata in disguise; the mood of the opening one in F minor is, despite being marked Allegro moderato, altogether more taut and businesslike than the previous languorous mood-music, as if signalling that we are in for the long haul and need to start off alert to the complexities of the material Schubert is manipulating here if we are to stay the emotional course. We are in a very different sound world from D.899 and it confers a unity on all four until they do indeed sound like a sequence. This is Schubert smiling bravely, confronting adversity and finding beauty in the world to the extent that in the third Impromptu he nostalgically reverts to the tripping "Rosamunde" theme and plays with it to produce five charming variations. The final "Hungarian" No.4 sometimes has the same hectic flush in its cheek as the last movement of the String Quintet.

There is a certain juiciness and reverberance about this sumptuous recording which smacks of slightly too much enhancement but once you accept that all recording is a compromise and the product of many engineering choices, it certainly makes for all-enveloping listening.