BaL 7.01.17 - Schubert: Fantasie for Violin & Piano in C, D934

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

0930
Building a Library
Harriet Smith compares recordings of Schubert’s Fantasie for Violin & Piano in C major, D934. It’s a piece which baffled its audience when it was premiered in 1828, because it was much longer and more complexly structured than the conservative Viennese audience was used to. Despite using a recognisable melody of one of Schubert’s own songs in its central variation movement, a contemporary review remarked that the piece took rather more time and concentration than “a Viennese is prepared to devote to pleasures of the mind.” Great virtuosity is required from both violin & piano, so which duo of performers will come out on top?

Available versions:

Salvatore Accardo & Maria Bergmann (download)
Adele Anthony & Jonathan Feldman
Thomas Brandis & Bruno Canino
Adolf Busch & Rudolf Serkin
Renaud Capuçon & Jerome Ducros (download)
Mirijam Contzen & Herbert Schuch
Tomas Cotik & Tao Lin
Rafael Druian & John Simms (download)
Isabelle Faust & Alexander Melnikov
Liza Ferschtman & Inon Barnatan (download)
Julia Fischer & Martin Helmchen
Hedi Gigler & Wilhelm Kempff
Szymon Goldberg, Radu Lupu
Jascha Heifetz & Brooks Smith
Frank Huang & Dina Vainstein
Alina Ibragimova & Cédric Tiberghien
Jacques Israelievitch & Stephane Lemelin (download)
Dong-Suk Kang & Pascal Devoyon
Nina Karmon & Maria Sofianska (download)
Suyoen Kim & Dong-hyek Lim
Rudolf Kolisch & Paul Badura-Skoda (download)
Jennifer Koh & Reiko Uchida
Gidon Kremer & Valery Afanassiev
Boris Kucharsky & Elizabeth Hopkins
Tasmin Little & Piers Lane
Johanna Martzy & Jean Antonietti
Yehudi Menuhin+
Lydia Mordkovitch & Gerhard Oppitz (download)
Viktoria Mullova & Katia Labeque
David Oistrakh & Frida Bauer
Ji Hae Park & Simon Lepper
György Pauk & Peter Frankl
Daniel Rohn & Milani Chernyavska
Jacqueline Ross & Maggie Cole (download)
Andras Schiff, Yuuko Shiokawa
Frank Stadler & Luis Magalhaes
Isaac Stern & Daniel Barenboim (download)
Antje Weithaas & Silke Avenhaus
Carolin Widmann & Alexander Lonquich
Pieter Wispelwey (cello) & Paolo Giacometti
Kaoru Yamada & Sholto Kynoch
Sinn Yang & Marco Grisanti

Members of Arion Trio
Members of Trio Dali

[Richard Tarleton]

I love this piece. My one and only recording is, er, not on the above list - it's by a 15-year old Maxim Vengerov, from 1989, with Irina Vinogradova, on Biddulph LAW 001 (picked up in local music shop around 25 years ago). Possibly/probably NLA. The disc has lots of violin gems - Tzigane, Ernst's Last Rose, Waxman Carmen, etc.....Looking forward to hearing what goes into a good performance.....

[vinteuil]

.

... also Ulf Hoelscher & Karl Engel

http://amzn.eu/3OWxGfk

[mikealdren]

I also love the piece but it is surprisingly hard to bring off in performance. Oistrakh is brilliant at it both with Bauer (above) and Yampolsky on brilliant, he captures the long lines in his inimitable way. Kogan is also available in the brilliant box (noisy live audience from 1975), nowhere near as good as Oistakh, for example he has no idea how to pace the opening to capture the stillness, he's very four square and a bit agressive. I don't think Kremer really captures it either (I have 2 recordings of him).

I heard Vilde Frang play it superbly recently at a Wigmore lunchtime concert. I don't have Isabelle Faust but I do have her Ama sonata and it's very good indeed.

Very much looking forwards to this one, I could do with a recording in modern sound.

Mike

[verismissimo]

0930
Building a Library
Harriet Smith compares recordings of Schubert’s Fantasie for Violin & Piano in C major, D934. It’s a piece which baffled its audience when it was premiered in 1828, because it was much longer and more complexly structured than the conservative Viennese audience was used to...

That would be the conservative Viennese audience used to listening to reactionary old Beethoven?

[LeMartinPecheur]

Nice to see lots of boarders who love this piece but I fear EA's listing, great work as usual, tells a slightly different story: a work that has never really caught on with performers and audiences alike.

The current catalogue isn't huge, and the number of great violinists of yore who don't show suggests - in the current spate of cheap 'complete recordings' boxes - that many of them never bothered with it.

I'll listen with interest, being always keen to be persuaded that here's another Schubert masterpiece that I've missed. Missed, or underestimated? - the LMP shelves reveal the Brandis and the Busch from EA's list, plus an ancient LP of Gidon and Elena Kremer, Philips 9500 904, c/w a Mozart Grande Sonate in F (that's Franz Xavier Mozart, not WAM) plus LvB Variations on 'Se vuol ballare'. All pretty central repertoire of course - see main thesis above

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I love it, too - I have only one recording (Jaime Laredo and Stephanie Brown on BRILLIANT):

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Schubert-Complete-Works-Violin-Piano/dp/B0001ZWJBW

... so I shall be looking to supplement with a couple of other versions from the forty-four (how "huge" do you want, LMP?!) in Alpie's list following the BaL.

[EdgeleyRob]

I have Dong-Suk Kang & Pascal Devoyon (Naxos)
It's a lovely cd c/w some charming sonatas (or are they sonatinas ?)from a seriously underrated violinist

[BBMmk2]

I have Tasmin Little & Piers lane. very good recording and top quality sound, from Chandos.

[mikealdren]

Nice to see lots of boarders who love this piece but I fear EA's listing, great work as usual, tells a slightly different story: a work that has never really caught on with performers and audiences alike.

The current catalogue isn't huge, and the number of great violinists of yore who don't show suggests - in the current spate of cheap 'complete recordings' boxes - that many of them never bothered with it.

I'll listen with interest, being always keen to be persuaded that here's another Schubert masterpiece that I've missed. Missed, or underestimated? - the LMP shelves reveal the Brandis and the Busch from EA's list, plus an ancient LP of Gidon and Elena Kremer, Philips 9500 904, c/w a Mozart Grande Sonate in F (that's Franz Xavier Mozart, not WAM) plus LvB Variations on 'Se vuol ballare'. All pretty central repertoire of course - see main thesis above

I think the issue is that, even more than most late Schubert, it's hard to bring off. The ability to produce the stillness and tranquility required while keeping the music moving is very difficult. Listen to a poor performance and it's really boring, listen to a great performance and it's a great masterpiece. I always feel the same about the Rosamunde quartet for instance.

It's technically difficult but in reality that shouldn't trouble our current crop of virtuoso violinists.

[LeMartinPecheur]

I think the issue is that, even more than most late Schubert, it's hard to bring off. The ability to produce the stillness and tranquility required while keeping the music moving is very difficult. Listen to a poor performance and it's really boring, listen to a great performance and it's a great masterpiece. I always feel the same about the Rosamunde quartet for instance.

It's technically difficult but in reality that shouldn't trouble our current crop of virtuoso violinists.

Looks like a good subject for BaL then: I shall try to emerge more convinced

[Stanfordian]

In 2012 Anne-Sophie Mutter who had been touring with the work and was playing it that evening with Lambert Orkis said to me in an interview "The Schubert Fantasie in C major which I am playing tonight is the crown of chamber music repertoire… Seriously, it is the greatest piece ever written for violin and piano."

[AmpH]

I like this work very much. I have 2 disc sets of Schubert chamber works which include this work, by Julia Fischer / Martin Helmchen ( Pentatone ) and Alina Ibragimova / Cedric Tiberghien ( Hyperion ) neither of which I would want to be without. Doubt I will be in the market for any more.

[Stanfordian]

I like this work very much. I have 2 disc sets of Schubert chamber works which include this work, by Julia Fischer / Martin Helmchen ( Pentatone ) and Alina Ibragimova / Cedric Tiberghien ( Hyperion ) neither of which I would want to be without. Doubt I will be in the market for any more.

Hiya AmpH,

With chamber performers of that calibre I'm sure you are in safe hands.

[BBMmk2]

I like this work very much. I have 2 disc sets of Schubert chamber works which include this work, by Julia Fischer / Martin Helmchen ( Pentatone ) and Alina Ibragimova / Cedric Tiberghien ( Hyperion ) neither of which I would want to be without. Doubt I will be in the market for any more.

Tasmin Little and Piers Lane on Chandos is also a very fine account.