Bavouzet Plays Schumann
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ROBERT SCHUMANN
Bavouzet Plays Schumann
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (piano)
[ Chandos / CD ]
Release Date: Friday 1 February 2019
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Following his recent acclaimed recordings of Haydn and Beethoven Sonatas, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet turns from the classical to the romantic era, and the works of Schumann. The programme is built around the Grande Sonate (No. 3). This impressive, large-scale work was originally composed in 1834, revised in 1853, and eventually premiered (six years after the composer's death) by Schumann's young protégé Johannes Brahms.
Jean-Efflam first discovered the work through a recording by Vladimir Horowitz in the 1980s, and got to play the work to, and discuss it with, Horowitz in Paris in 1985. In two passages in the first movement, like Horowitz before him, Jean-Efflam combines elements from both the original and revised versions of the work on this recording.
He has chosen to complement the sonata with another early work - the Faschingsschwank aus Wien - and then the much later Drei Fantasiestücke. He closes with the Gesänge der Frühe which was among the last compositions that Schumann wrote before his attempted suicide and confinement to a mental asylum in February 1854.
As he does in all his albums, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet contributes an insightful personal performer's note to the booklet.
"For his first-ever Schumann recital, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has put together an intriguing programme, one in which he by no means follows obvious routes or makes life easy for himself. He begins with the Op. 14 Sonata … It's all too easy for the sonata to sound so extreme that it becomes bitty, but Bavouzet gives it an overall sweep that is absolutely engaging…the Frenchman knows exactly what he is doing: the finale is a masterclass in precision and clarity, even at speed, its more lyrical writing brought fully alive." Gramophone
"Ever a supremely intelligent musician, Bavouzet brings clarity, gentleness and urgency to all, with a sense of distilled struggle in the five Gesänge der Frühe (Songs at Dawn)" Guardian
"Bavouzet establishes his credentials immediately with a gripping account of Horowitz's 'edition' of the Third Sonata, which climaxes in a moto perpetuo finale that the Frenchman somehow manages to inflect with washes of textural colour…without losing an urgent sense of forward momentum…Bavouzet brings [the later works] to life here with a radiant energy that utterly refutes the notion that Schumann's creative powers were by now fast waning." BBC Music Five Stars
Tracks:
Sonata in F minor, Op.14
Faschingsschwank Aus Wien, Op.26
Drei Fantasiestucke, Op.111
Gesänge Der Frühe, Op.133
