Yaara Tal, Andreas Groethuysen - Schubert: Piano Music for Four Hands, Vol. 2 (1995)

This outstanding Israeli-German piano duo gave us the first two-disc volume in their Schubert series some 18 months ago (9/94), and I then saluted their “strong and compelling” performances, not least of the wonderful F minor Fantasie. This present pair of discs features the same Fazioli Model 308 grand piano, its big modern sound clearly unauthentic but surprisingly effective in conveying what the artists call the ‘symphonic’ aspects of the music. The 20-bit technology recording is splendidly clear yet atmospheric, with a fine dynamic range. As for the playing, it is wonderfully controlled, affectionate while subtly poised and textured, with flexible tone and tempo – a model of Schubert duet style and ultimately surpassing the recent Isabel Beyer/Harvey Dagul series, good though that is, because of the younger artists’ greater responsiveness and refinement. With Beyer and Dagul one cannot quite forget that some of this music is the lesser Schubert: Tal and Groethuysen are just that bit more persuasive, and winningly so.

However, the little-known “Lebenssturme” Allegro that opens the first disc here is of a higher quality than that, a vivid and intense piece in Schubert’s tragic key of A minor that is not unworthy of comparison with the Fantasie and was composed a month after that masterpiece of the composer’s final year. The Four Polonaises of 1818 are more ordinary, but still delightful when played as elegantly as this, and the same may be said of the E minor Variations on a French song (the theme apparently penned by Napoleon’s sister-in-law) – a work from the same year that the young Schubert dedicated to Beethoven. The later Divertissement (“sur des motifs originaux francaix”), a three-movement suite in all but name, is in the same key of E minor but more striking: its central variation-form Andantino is among the best and most personal music that Schubert wrote, with subtleties of every kind that Tal and Groethuysen respond to consistently.

All this music is on the first disc. The second offers the same mixed bag: medium to highest quality in the music but outstanding playing. Thus the six Grandes marches are frankly conventional despite their occasional Hungarian flavour; they also last far too long, occupying well over an hour in all and with No. 5 alone lasting nearly 20 minutes – though the latter, funereal and in the unusual key of F flat minor, is rather special and was later transcribed for orchestra by Liszt. However, the very late Rondo in A is rich in invention and emotionally deep. -- Christopher Headington