Schubert : Sonate D 960, Trois pièces pour piano. Badura-Skoda.

   in Piano International (May, 2014)
This release utilises the potential of the recording process to the full. It is a rather specialist mode of thought, perhaps, to include not one but three performances of the same piece on one release. But for pianists, historians and musicians alike, this disc is a goldmine. Badura-Skoda performs Schubert’s last sonata on a Graf fortepiano from around 1826, a 2004 Steinway and a 1923 Bosendorfer. Each instrument has its own individual sound.

Badura-Skoda plays the Klavierstucke on the Graf, as he does the first D960, thus ensuring the whole of disc one is on the same instrument. He delivers a muscular, imposing reading of D946, with an underlying disquiet throughout. …