Pianist Stephen Hough has recorded a great deal of Romantic repertory, always with insight of one kind or another. The general outlines of his style, restrained and well-proportioned, are evident in this recording of Schubert sonatas, but here, Hough offers something new: an intensity and narrative quality that have a subjectivity not often associated with this pianist, and it works with these specific pieces, each of which seems on the verge of a breakthrough. Consider the fragmentary Piano Sonata in E minor, D. 769a, ...
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Pianist Stephen Hough has recorded a great deal of Romantic repertory, always with insight of one kind or another. The general outlines of his style, restrained and well-proportioned, are evident in this recording of Schubert sonatas, but here, Hough offers something new: an intensity and narrative quality that have a subjectivity not often associated with this pianist, and it works with these specific pieces, each of which seems on the verge of a breakthrough. Consider the fragmentary Piano Sonata in E minor, D. 769a, which is about a minute long and is reasonably enough very rarely played, but it plays a key role in the program. Its strikingly chromatic, almost violent opening paves the way for the profound large structures of the late sonatas. Schubert worked out another step in his final style with the sizable Piano Sonata in G major, D. 894, and the early Piano Sonata in A major, D. 664, likewise seems on the cusp of Schubert's mature instrumental style, with its Viennese melodies beginning to...
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