Schubert - String Quintet in C / Alban Berg Quartet • Schiff
The most beautiful score ever.
If you think different, obvious What is Best is wasted on you
Listen to the adagio.
Period.
Franz Schubert: Piano Music for 4 Hands
Schubert made easy.
Written to be played with a countess (not really a gifted pupil) so easy but typically Schubert.
The melody flows and flows and flows.
If it is finished just start a new one.
Talking composing Schubert is not the best (structure) but certainly the most beautiful.
If you are unfamiliar with his work this is a nice starter.
Schubert: The Song Cycles
Schubert made uneasy.
Das Lied is a very specific genre and Schubert Lieder are probably the best.
The lyrics are very romantic. Poets like Rellstab, etc. As most of you are Americans you probably don’t understand a word (German). Keep it that way.
The piano is pre-romantic
The voice is probably the hardest part, over cultivated.
There is a lot of beauty in it but it is probably hard to discover it.
You like it? Well Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau recorded all the Schubert Lieder (450).
Schubert: Trout Quintet; Arpeggione Sonata; Notturno
I like the performances by L’Archibudelli
It are authentic performances so instruments form the period and played in the style of that period. Strings are played without vibrato and the piano is a forte piano.
You probably need some time to get used to the sound as it is very lean.
But transparency is your reward. You hear all the individual instruments, how they interact, etc.
Great musicians, the music is more important than technical perfection.
Beethoven: The Complete String Quartets
Beethoven’s development as a composer is clearly demonstrated by his string quartets.
In the early ones (opus 18) you hear a lot of his teacher, Haydn.
The middle period (opus 59) is typical Beethoven, lyrical, teasing and tremendous outbursts.
The heavy metal in classical
The late string quartets are not easy.
Beethoven is a minimalist, variations on a small thema. The music becomes ‘sparse’, minimalist like.
Play them ordered by opus number, you are going from easy to exiting to grave.