[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 if in an intimate tête-à-tête. The Moments musicaux, D 780, and the Four Impromptus, D 935, smile with informal grace.

Schiff’s Schubert is a known quantity: his comprehensive Decca set of the keyboard works remains a classic, but the sounds here are unexpected...Schiff, a self-confessed period-instrument convert, returns to the great G and B major sonatas, the second set of Impromptus and Moments Musicaux, making them sound hot off the press, fresh and new.

Schiff conjures wisp-like sonorities and never makes an ugly sound, and the Moments musicaux crackle with incisive effects. The smaller pieces work best, while the sonatas are quite difficult to sustain.

[The 1820 Brodmann instrument] sounds glorious: its tone and action seem ideally to suit these works…let us hope there is more to come.

Many years after recording all the composer’s sonatas, Andras Schiff rethinks, on an historical Brodmann fortepiano, his approach to Schubert, underlining the intimate, almost confidential side of his music. Irony, sadness, intensity and gravity: the many facets of Schubert piano music are to be found in one of the most personal and valuable contributions to the recent discography.