Schubert: Piano Sonatas D. 845, D. 894, D. 958, D. 960

Album review

With this new release, Shai Wosner continues his journey to the centre of the world of Schubert – a composer for whom the Israeli pianist, who has lived in New York since the age of 20, has various forms of affinity, and especially with his four later Sonatas. The first hour brings together the great Sonata in a minor, D. 845, which Pollini recorded for Deutsche Grammophon in his youth, as well as the astonishing Sonata D. 894 in G Major, a journey of another order altogether, closer to the final piece which is preceded by the dramatic Sonata in C minor, D. 958. A follower of Emanuel Ax, Shai Wosner seduces with his supreme elegance. The magnetic poetry of his playing style finds especially promising ground in Schubert’s work – but also in the later pages of Brahms. His Schubert is pure, absolutely without ornament. The great delicacy in the variations of nuances, the attention to phrasing and the accuracy of tempo, the search for lyricism at the heart of an intimate discourse: all these facets again set Wosner apart as a musician, even if the relative absence of contrasts is sometimes striking (Sonata D. 894). At the heart of this double album, recorded over in six days in July 2018 at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, are the particularly moving moments at the Finale of the D. 845, at a very moderate tempo, or a very finely balanced D. 958 which was never going to sound like a romantic post-Erlkönig joyride here (as Svyatoslav Richter wanted it to be). On the contrary, only the song, in its contrasts, shines here: a seductively light touch. There is no surprise when we hear the opening strains of the Andante sostenuto of the D. 960 : music of the spheres, here absolutely aerial, but never ethereal! © Pierre-Yves Lascar/Qobuz