The pianist Lars Vogt died in September final yr. His most cancers had been recognized in 2021, and he was already sick when, in opposition to docs’ recommendation, he had travelled to Bremen to start these Schubert recordings together with his longtime collaborators, the violinist Christian Tetzlaff and his cellist sister Tanja. They started with the death-haunted E flat Trio, D929, with its funeral-march second motion, and recorded the B flat Trio, D898 4 months later. Within the sleeve notes to the set, the Tetzlaffs focus on the background to the classes, paying touching tribute to their buddy and his music making: “I discover that within the recording,” says Tanja, “one notices that deep inside he already knew that in all chance he wasn’t going to have the ability to dwell very for much longer.”
And nice because the taking part in of the Tetzlaffs is, appropriately it’s Vogt’s splendidly unshowy, rhythmically crisp and by no means overbearing taking part in that appears to characterise these excellent performances, from his whisper-quiet pianissimos to essentially the most forceful triple fortes. The strings match his great dynamic vary, too; the music flows naturally, with out a second of contrivance or artificiality, or any trace of sentimentality.
There’s additionally room on the discs for different late Schubert items, together with the sublimely easy Notturno for Piano Trio, D897; the violin-and-piano Rondo, D895, and the Arpeggione Sonata, which is eased into life by Tanja and Vogt, and isn’t showy however filled with shared light asides. Nevertheless it’s the performances of the 2 trios that outline this set. There are, after all, already many nice performances of those works on disc, from each era of performers, however amongst latest variations there are none higher than these.
This week’s different choose
In addition to being one of many Twentieth-century’s best violinists, a conductor, and the chief of maybe the best of all string quartets, Adolf Busch was a composer of greater than 100 works. They’re not often heard now, however the Sarastro Quartet’s disc of his chamber music, for CPO, offers a superb sense of his essentially late-romantic fashion. Busch had been a protege of Max Reger, and within the works right here – a string quartet in A minor, a set of 9 items for string quartet, and a flute quintet – there are hints of Reger’s gnarly chromaticism in a musical world that appears rooted in Beethoven and stays very firmly tonal.
