A faculty member at Eastern Michigan University, pianist Joel Schoenhals first attracted my attention with two unusual and brilliantly executed CD releases: one devoted to Chinese piano music, the other to Liszt/Schubert transcriptions including all 14 songs from Schwanengesang. By contrast, the present release offers more commonplace and frequently recorded repertoire.
As it happens, Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy boasts relatively few disc versions that are unambiguously great, such as those of Sviatoslav Richter (EMI), Murray Perahia (Sony), Leon Fleisher (Sony), and even the old premiere recording by Edwin Fischer (EMI). A few others come close to the ideal mark: think of Gary Graffman (RCA), Arthur Rubinstein (RCA), Lili Kraus (Vanguard), and a surprisingly forthright and disciplined traversal from Lang Lang’s Carnegie Hall recital debut (DG). Schoenhals often holds his own among the latter.
He takes Schubert’s opening Allegro con fuoco directive at face value, while giving lyrical contrasting character to the second theme. The Adagio’s opening “Wanderer” theme unfolds in muted, hauntingly sustained tones, followed by flexibly phrased variations that some listeners may feel lack power at the climaxes. While the Presto’s tempos and phrasings are right on the mark, more incisive articulation and wider contrasts in dynamics are needed. Joy and momentum reign in Schoenhals’ Finale, save for the pianist’s holding back in the final pages’ upward left-hand arpeggios and loud right-hand broken chords.
At first I felt Schoenhals’ tenutos and arguably exaggerated ritards in the Schumann first-movement opening threatened to wreck the music’s ardent flow, yet his bass-note accentuations and suavely excavated inner voices save the day. Also note his expansive shaping of the quote from Beethoven’s song cycle An die ferne Geliebte. The central movement’s obsessive dotted rhythms emerge less squarely than usual on account of Schoenhals’ fast basic tempo and paragraphic long lines, although he doesn’t broach the coda’s treacherous leaps with comparable suppleness and drive.
The lyrical final movement is similarly brisk. Schoenhals’ push/pull rubato has appreciable naturalness and proportion, while his “old school” breaking of hands adds a convincing textural dimension to how he distinguishes top melody notes from the accompaniment on the bottom. Incidentally, Schoenhals plays the Schumann’s longer first version of this movement where the aforementioned Beethoven theme returns. I suspect that Schoenhals possesses a heftier and more colorful sonority than the slightly muffled and compressed (though by no means bad) sonic image conveys. But Michelle Good’s inspired artwork displayed throughout the booklet abounds with vivid color.
