Browse: Presto Recordings of the Year, Schubert (composer)

There are moments when the music seems to call for a grandeur which this instrument can't produce, but with this recording Schubert's pianistic world is fundamentally transformed. — BBC Music Magazine, July 2019 More…

Zimerman takes us into a place of deep introspection, finding vast universes within. The recorded sound, by Rainer Maillard, is beautifully judged, combining gentleness with absolute clarity…This... — BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2017, More…

[Abbado] reaches extraordinary heights…every bar surges with energy, thrust, warmth of tone, miraculous detail in even the faster passages and…a huge joy in living, which must leave every sensitive... — BBC Music Magazine, September 2015 More…

[Schiff] shows how [the fortepiano's] muted, delicate sound can transform Schubert for modern listeners. Two of the piano sonatas, the G Major, D894, and the late B Flat, D960, speak to us as... — Financial Times, 9th May 2015, More…

Even Bostridge’s sometimes jarring crescendos sound as bleak cries from the hollowed soul. There is a terrifying icy detachment in Adès’s evocative touch. Above it, Bostridge’s weary wanderer... — BBC Music Magazine, December 2019, More…

They are all works requiring formidable technical ability, and pianist Alexander Melnikov brings clarity of touch and virtuoso flair to them all, transferring as if effortlessly from instrument... — BBC Music Magazine, May 2018, More…

Kaufmann has come to this music at the right time...Each of these 24 songs is stamped with integrity and seriousness of purpose...The most striking qualities are its artless simplicity, its vocal... — Financial Times, 22nd February 2014, More…

The solemn Arpeggione is prefigured here by Isserlis’s arrangement of Chopin’s achingly beautiful ‘Nie ma czego trzeba’. Again in this Sonata, the duo offer graceful transparency, lithe refinement... — BBC Music Magazine, November 2018, More…

Perhaps more than any other recording the singer and the pianist are in equilibrium...if often sounds as if Julius Drake has just had an idea - and they are all good ones - and Gerald Finley... — BBC Music Magazine, May 2014, More…

Stravinsky's Rite of Spring prompts several adjectives: brutal, revolutionary, relentless, terrifying...But elegant? Urbane, seductive, sensuous? This astonishing performance is all that and... — BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2014, More…