Schubert: Piano Sonatas D958–D960, Murray Perahia, piano

Schubert’s trilogy of piano sonatas, composed during a frantic burst of creativity during the final months of his all-too-short life, should ideally be heard as a group. As Alfred Brendel has demonstrated, despite their unique emotional worlds, they were mined from the same quarry; there are literally dozens of thematic cross-references. Murray Perahia’s new recordings of these works, coupled together on a mid-priced double album, is therefore sensible and most welcome.

It might seem odd to begin by mentioning Perahia’s long-time recording producer, Andreas Neubronner, but I shall. He has been responsible for some of the most realistic piano recordings that it has been my pleasure to encounter, and here he continues to set the highest standard; these records are a joy to listen to purely as piano sound.

Perahia is particularly impressive in the final B flat major sonata. He takes the exposition repeat, as he does in the other two sonatas. This is controversial territory, especially in the case of the D960 sonata; Sviatoslav Richter’s insistence on including the repeat, alongside a measured view of Schubert’s Molto moderato tempo indication, resulted in an overall timing of around 25 minutes for the movement, longer than the other three movements put together! Perahia’s more flowing tempo brings him in at exactly 19 minutes; I’m still inclined to agree with Brendel’s opinion that “in Schubert, psychological considerations often overrule formal ones.” Perahia holds the listener spellbound with playing of deep concentration in this sonata’s disconcerting twists and turns, making no attempt to “rationalise” the music.

By contrast, in the Andantino of the A major Sonata, in the central section of which Schubert unflinchingly stares into the abyss, Perahia seems over-concerned with the harmonic design at the expense of the horror of the vision, this is Schubert’s Norman-Bates-in-the-fruit-cellar moment. Here, Brendel remains the supreme exponent, although the recent Paul Lewis recording (on Harmonia Mundi) is pretty hair-raising. Perahia’s account of the C minor Sonata, grandly realised and properly symphonic in conception, completes a masterly survey of these masterpieces. We seem to have been overwhelmed with excellent records of late Schubert piano works recently; don’t overlook Perahia would be my advice.