Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexandre Tharaud - Schubert: Arpeggione Sonata & Other Works for Cello and Piano (2006) CD-Rip

One might be forgiven for initially thinking that this recital featuring works for cello and piano by Franz Schubert, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg was, well, a stunt. After all, aside from their birth in the city of Vienna, what do the three composers have in common? Schubert was the quintessential master of lyrical Austro-German romanticism, while Webern and Berg were two of the three most reviled masters of atonal Austro-German expressionism -- the third, of course, was Arnold Schoenberg -- and one might think they'd be an impossible coupling. Not so: in this beautifully played and brilliantly programmed recital by cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and pianist Alexandre Tharaud, the works of Schubert, Webern, and Berg go together like a ménage à trois. A passionate but tender performance of Schubert's Arpeggione opens the disc, followed by alternations of five beguiling transcriptions of his songs and his D major Violin Sonata with an exquisitely ethereal performance of Webern's Drei kleine Stücke and an ardently emotional performance of a transcription of Berg's Vier Stücke. Setting the usual side by side with the unusual is a wonderful way to make the usual seem fresh and the unusual seem more familiar. Captured in Harmonia Mundi's uncharacteristically warm, almost humid sound, this disc should be heard by anyone who likes Schubert, Webern, and Berg, or just great playing.