Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

It would seem from the scarce response to this recording that Mitsuko Uchida isn't a favorite at Amazon. But anyone who stumbles across her 1996 reading of the eight Schubert Impromptus will certianly fall in love with these sublime works, and Uchida's playing of them is limpid and delicate. Often I find her too mannered in Schubert, whose style was above all natural, and there are moments when she adds a touch of hesitation that breaks up a phrase. But this quirk is kept to a minimum, and with such good paino sound from Philips, I'd rate this CD as one of her best.

I'm not a great fan of Uchida, she often belittles music at the expense of being super-subtle and at her narrow dynamic range, but these recordings of Impromptus have made an indelible impression on me. I haven't heard them played before with such tenderness and empathy. Her dynamic range is still narrow compared to other pianists, but she compensates it with hardly audible pianissimo which is sheer magic, used at right moments, for example in the G flat major Impromptu, and her playing has the ethereal fluidity that captures the inherent wistfulness of Schubert's music.

Only great maestros can shade - each time they perform them - such a fresh light on the beloved masterpieces and get touching accounts to be engraved in listeners' souls for ever, with a charming air of inevitability.

Mitsuko Uchida, in her early fifties - at the peak of an impressive career and in full command of her artistic powers - launched a series of recordings devoted to sonatas and other piano works by Franz Schubert with this wonderful CD gathering the two sets of Impromptus (D 899 and D 935), both composed in 1827 a year prior Schubert's untimely death. Far from being treated as simply salon music, these lyrical miniatures gain in Uchida's hands a tender noblesse by means of a minutely weighed approach. For instance, the A flat major D899 and the F minor D 935 ones simply amaze up to mind-blowing - so subtle the playing, so rich in emotions the result!

However, Mitsuko Uchida definitely belongs to the select caste of great maestros of the piano, always in love with the music she interprets but keeping a lucid eye on it to avoid sentimental exaggerations or harsh readings (though certain harsh accents still can be heard in B flat major D 035). With a special affinity for the classical Viennese school, her renditions breathe an astounding technical exactitude, though never shadowing the emotional content of the work performed. Moreover, as in the case at hand here, a restraint delicacy runs through the proceedings aiming at the very essence of the music. No glamour, no sparkling effects, no showy declamations - just music in its purity!

Great composers chose great interpreters! Unseen channels communicate between them through the scores. Beyond technical skills and musical knowledge, beyond sensitivity and keen insight, there is an unnamed gift that makes the difference and divides the professional top musicians in "good", "excellent", "genius" or "other-worldly". If Mitsuko Uchida had recorded only these Impromptus I dare say she fully deserves to complete the golden triplet of greatest living Schubertians, conversing on an equal footing with legends Alfred Brendel and Radu Lupu.

Five stars!