This collection of all of Schubert's songs for low voice is one of the landmark recordings of the 20th century because it features two of the greatest Schubertians of their era, baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and pianist Gerald Moore. The recordings, made by Deutsche Grammophon between 1966 and 1972, come from Fischer-Dieskau's prime, when he was in his early to mid-thirties, his voice fully mature and its youthful bloom gloriously resplendent. He brought an acute, probing intelligence to everything he performed, as well as a penetrating, unmannered musicality, and those qualities are everywhere apparent in his Schubert lieder. Moore was primarily known as an accompanist, and in that role he was perhaps unsurpassed, but his contribution to the music is no way secondary. His playing has interpretive distinctiveness as well as the instinctive musicality of a performer deeply immersed in Schubert's sound world. The singer and pianist made multiple recordings of many of these songs and while aficionados may prefer a version of a song or cycle other than the one offered here, the version here is never less than superb.The set, which includes 463 songs on 21 discs, should be of utmost interest to any fans of the singer and pianist, and to anyone who loves Schubert, and to anyone who loves collaborative music-making of the highest order. The value of the limited edition set released in celebration of the singer's 85th birthday makes it a terrific bargain. The remastering is mostly exemplary and the sound is immaculate, warm, and present. There are a few technical glitches, like a slight click and skip in the introduction to "Wasserflut," but overall the sound is first-class. The balance is just about ideal; it's easy to shut one's eyes and imagine the performers there in the same room. Very highly recommended.© TiVo

No, no, we're not going to pretend that the repertoire chosen by the Austrian-Persian (the nationality stated on his website... born in 1992) cellist Kian Soltani and the Austrian pianist Aaron Pilsan is completely original: Schubert's "Arpeggione" Sonata, recorded a thousand and one times, and Schumann's Fantasiestücke form the backbone of the record. But what's really remarkable here is Soltani's career: the soloist made his big international breakthrough in 2011 at the age of 19, with triumphant débuts at the Vienna Musikverein, and then First Prize at the International Paulo Cello Competition in Helsinki in 2013. Shortly thereafter he joined Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, firstly as the first solo cellist, and then as one of the soloists in Beethoven's Triple Concerto and Strauss's Don Quixote still with Barenboim. Concerts followed in Berlin, the Salzburg and Lucerne festivals, and the BBC Proms, as a soloist or in a chamber ensemble. A brilliant career, off to a flying start. The album listing finds a touch of originality at the end, with Persian Folklore by the Iranian composer Reza Vali (b. 1952), a piece of writing inspired by Kodály's own translations of popular Hungarian music into classical language. © SM/Qobuz

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Some of Jean-Nicolas Diatkine's singer friends have ended their careers, but their magic is irreplaceable in his eyes, or rather in his ears. He misses them, just as he misses the Schubert, Schumann and Brahms songs they sang. Well, there is only one person who can compensate for this loss, and his name is Franz Liszt. The main aim of transcriptions was to make orchestral works known to a wider audience, at a time when there were far fewer orchestras, and public access to symphony concerts was very limited. But Liszt gives transcriptions a new meaning: he puts the orchestra into the piano, since his style is particularly suited to outsized extravagance. Thus he opens up unprecedented pianistic possibilities, where virtuosity is no longer mere exhibitionism but rather transformed into the art of illusion. His arrangements of Wagner are so convincing that they become his own personal creations. Laurent Bessières, piano tuner at the Paris Philharmonic, suggested for this recording a Schiedmayer piano of 1916 made in Stuttgart, which he had completely rebuilt in collaboration with Antoine Letessier-Salmon, director of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, and Stephen Paulello, piano maker and inventor of the strings that bear his name. This instrument has almost never been used in concert, however excellent work by Laurent Bessières convinced us to try it out in this very special repertoire. © solo musica

So it's not complete: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau couldn't sing all the exquisite songs intended for women and wouldn't sing all the interminable ballades. But that's fine: there are plenty of great recordings of the songs for women and if anyone really wants to hear the ballades, there's Graham Johnson's superb Schubert edition. But, aside from those small quibbles, Fischer-Dieskau's ten-disc set of Schubert's songs from 1811 through 1817 is as complete as it needs to be and as great as humanly possible. That Fischer-Dieskau is the voice of German Lieder in later years is beyond argument. That he was the greatest singer of Schubert's Lieder is beyond question. That this set of performances is a labor of heart, mind, soul, and spirit is beyond doubt. That it is one of the greatest sets of recordings ever made fit to stand beside Furtwängler's Tristan, Sinatra's Only the Lonely, and the Beatles' Abbey Road is one of the immutable truths of recording history. Anyone who loves Schubert should hear this set.© TiVo

13 songs from Schubert's masterpiece are lifted into Noémi Waysfeld and Guillaume de Chassy's dreamlike world.Recorded September 2019, Studio La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines (France)

The first fortepiano recording of a collection belatedly gaining recognition beyond pianophile circles as a major keyboard cycle of late Romanticism. Sigismond Thalberg (1812-1871) has a reputation as the only pianist who made Liszt feel nervous, but he also won praise from Mendelssohn for the fidelity of his approach to the letter and the spirit of a score. A famous anecdote tells also of an evening in Rossini's Parisian salon. Sigismond Thalberg had just finished performing at the piano when Rossini said: "Agree that Thalberg has just given you a singing lesson such as you have never had", referring to the cantabile, refinement and expressiveness of the pianist's touch. Thalberg gathered four volumes of operatic and song transcriptions under the umbrella of L’art du chant appliqué au piano, with the first two volumes published in 1853 and followed a decade later by Volumes 3 and 4. Thalberg's connection with the vocal art is as deep as ever. If, on the one hand, a large part of his production is made up of paraphrases, fantasies and variations on the main opera themes, works in which he showed off the so-called "sound illusions à la Thalberg", on the other hand, the public praised the pianist's ability to recreate a "vocal" sound on his instrument. Thalberg delegated to L'Art du chant appliqué au piano, Op. 70 the task of representing the "theoretical" summary of his "vocal art" and the dynamic means to obtain it. The title clarifies its purpose: to teach how to reproduce the expression, breath and warmth of singing on the piano. Thalberg's collection consists of transcriptions of vocal works by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Bellini, Meyerbeer, Rossini Weber and others. While it opens with the quartet from Bellini’s I Puritani, Thalberg’s selection of original material ranges far and wide beyond masterpieces of bel canto. There is a haunting transformation of a duet once attributed to the Neapolitan composer Stradella; a straightforward but affectionate transcription of Adelaide, the song by Beethoven that became his most popular piece of vocal music during the 19th century; as well as a much more elaborate fantasia on a number from the incidental music composed by Carl Maria von Weber for the Spanish drama Preciosa. There are some quintessentially Romantic-era walls of sound in the first two volumes of the collection, such as Thalberg’s version of the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem, but the limpid textures and uncluttered singing lines of L’art du chant mark a salutary contrast with the cascades and thunderbolts of the hyper-virtuoso repertoire. In this regard, the lighter touch of the fortepiano is well suited to the ideals of vocal expression, transferred to the keyboard, enshrined in Thalberg’s collection. Roberto Commellato’s new version therefore brings something new to the work’s selective but distinguished discography. He has already established himself in his native Italy as a leading exponent of historically informed keyboard performance. This reputation is reflected in his Brilliant Classics discography of fortepiano albums of music by Beethoven, concertos by Hummel and cello sonatas by Beethoven’s contemporary and diarist Ferdinand Ries. Alessandro Commellato plays here on an Erard instrument. © Piano Classics