Schubert ( Sonata en Sol D. 894 )

Schubert: Piano Sonata No.18 in G Major, D.894 (Volodos)

Schubert's most tranquil sonata, which is also one of his most important. Schumann famously regarded this as a perfect sonata. It's an anti-virtuoso work, where the difficulties are vast but almost purely interpretive: nearly all the music happens in shades and shadows, in the rests between notes. How do you make sense -- on a modern grand -- of those long moments of harmonic statis, of those repeated notes, repeated chords, repeated figurations and passages? Volodos plays this to perfection, handling the structural difficulty of some unorthodox modulations and the large-scale structure extremely well. He's most often cited as a Rachmaninoff interpreter, but the clarity and tenderness of his playing here proves that he's quite at home in highly introspective repertoire. He takes this slightly faster than Richter, but with greater restraint and, to my ear, more fine shadings of colour.

Movement I: 00:00 -- A luminous and serene movement, where there's hardly a modulation that does not seem profound. The momentary terrors of the development section are starkly outlined by Volodos, who manages to play with an incredible intensity of pain and ecstasy.
Movement II: 19:04 -- Volodos takes this movement very slowly, but he's got the colour in his playing to pull this off. Listen to the contrast between those limned pianissimo passages with their Neapolitan harmonies, and the stentorian chords immediately before.
Movement III: 26:55 -- Played with great delicacy and lots of subtle voicing.
Movement IV: 31:15 -- A standout movement. From the first two notes, with their pronounced detached slur, you know this is going to be something special. Every single open fifth and fourth stands out, the staccatos are full of wit, the poignant moments moving, the modulations full of life and vigour. The latter point is especially important in this movement, as it deploys an unusual modulatory scheme.