Schubert on Tape

Album review

Pianist Edna Stern offers her interpretations of the music of Schubert via a refreshing and personal method of recording, using analogue tape to record single takes of each piece in order to present the most honest and immediate performance possible. This ethos grew out of early experiences of hearing her own recordings: "I was shocked to encounter an interpretation that I myself could never have played or even imagined", and it was this that prompted Edna Stern "to go back to a mode of recording practice that would more faithfully do justice to the music and Schubert’s humane masterpieces in particular".

The masterpieces heard on this album are Schubert’s Four Impromptus and Six Moments musicaux, works that lend themselves to, or even demand, performances of truthfulness and spontaneity. Edna Stern grew up listening to her favorite artists on tape, and so it seemed natural to look to this medium in order to achieve a similar quality in her own album. This recording is made directly to tape, without any editing, with the result that we hear Stern’s Schubert unvarnished, in all its humanity and warmth. As she puts it: "There is a sense of freedom – even of danger – with the human and all their flaws. There is a coherent continuation of movement. Moreover, there is a sense of life". © Orchid Classics