Liszt: Via Crucis & Solo Piano Works
Pianists Bertrand Chamayou and Leif Ove Andsnes join forces to record Schubert’s magnificent Fantasia in F minor, presenting a landmark Schubert 4 Hands album. This release arrives 40 years after Radu Lupu and Murray Perahia’s legendary CBS recording and 60 years after Benjamin Britten and Sviatoslav Richter’s historic Aldeburgh Festival performance.
The duo delivers breathtaking interpretations that could establish this recording as the new reference for Schubert’s Fantasia. The album pairs the Fantasia with other Schubert four-hand works composed in 1828, the year of the composer’s death, offering a deeply intimate and historically informed program.
ABOUT
There is a history of major pianists joining forces to record Schubert’s Fantasia in F minor. Now it is the turn of Bertrand Chamayou and Leif Ove Andsnes. Composed in 1828, the final year of Schubert’s short life, the Fantasia is often described as the greatest of all works for two players at one piano. Chamayou and Andsnes first performed it together in 2016, when Andsnes launched the inaugural Rosendal Chamber Music Festival in western Norway. He had been impressed by a Schubert album that Chamayou had recorded for Erato, and it also happened that two pianists shared a mentor: the Belgian teacher Jacques de Tiège. As Andsnes says: “When we played Fantasia together in Rosendal it felt very natural, and actually very emotional, because it was the last piece in the festival that year.” He points out that, when playing Schubert’s music, “you have a feeling that the truth is just around the corner, but not where you are … It is some of the most sensitive music there is. So one really needs to feel total sympathy, physically and musically, with the other pianist.” Chamayou agrees: “It’s as if we have to become one, because we are both controlling the same instrument … Leif Ove and I both have this profile of being soloists, but also sharing music with others – either singers or chamber music partners … It’s very inspiring for us – and very natural for both of us too …” In the Fantasia in F minor, Leif Ove Andsnes plays primo, as he does in the Rondo in A major, D. 951, which also appears on the album. The two pianists change places for the Allegro in A minor, D. 947, Lebensstürme, and the Fugue in E minor, D. 952, as Bertrand Chamayou assumes the role of primo.
TRACKLISTING
I. Allegro molto moderato
II. Largo
III. Allegro vivace
IV. Finale. Allegro molto moderato
Schubert: Allegro for Piano Four-Hands in A Minor, Op. Posth. 144, D. 947 “Lebensstürme”
Schubert: Fugue for Piano Four-Hands in E Minor, Op. Posth. 152, D. 952
Schubert: Rondo for Piano Four-Hands in A Major, Op. 107, D. 951