The fifth release in Leif Ove Andsnes and Ian Bostridge’s Schubert project ought to be subtitled “The Incredible Shrinking Composer”, since it leads off with the huge C minor “Posthumous” sonata and winds down with fragments from unfinished songs and incomplete piano pieces. While the catalog doesn’t exactly lack world-class recordings of D. 958, Andsnes’ interpretation runs neck and neck with the best.
In the first movement he avoids Uchida’s slightly studied reverse accents and tempo fluctuations, evoking Richter’s prism-like, line-oriented sonority within a more objective interpretive aesthetic. For instance, Andsnes brings out the extraordinary harmonic juxtapositions presented in the exposition’s second theme through changing tone color and voicing rather than by modifying the basic tempo. The eloquent slow movement also is well sustained, partly by virtue of Andsnes’ textural diversity–you’ll notice how the pianist’s subtle and purposeful shifts in balance within the repeated triplet accompaniments insure against blandness.
He paces the Menuetto a little faster than most, generating long-lined tension and a rare, welcome feeling of one beat to the bar. Although the finale is lithe and weightless at the start, Andsnes slows down ever so slightly to better accommodate the music’s increasing harmonic density.
You might look to Andsnes as a golden mean between the brusque, Beethovenian intensity of Brendel’s first (and still best) recorded version on Vanguard and the soft-focused architecture and infinite gradations of touch Wilhelm Kempff serves up. Ian Bostridge’s text-driven, awesomely controlled vocalism often strikes listeners as illuminating or mannered, yet I can’t see anyone taking issue with Andsnes’ warm, sensitively detailed keyboard support.
