Bertrand Chamayou's new album is a bit of a puzzle. Though simply entitled "Schubert", it doesn't consist entirely of the genuine article, for starters: the Wanderer-Fantasie and the D946 Klavierstücke are the main works, but the accompanying smaller pieces include Liszt's transcriptions of some of the songs and Richard Strauss's version of the Kupelwieser Waltz, which Schubert never wrote down, but has been learned by ear by successive generations of pianists. Chamayou's playing is consistently persuasive. The Wanderer-Fantasie is a bit heavyweight for my taste, although the Klavierstücke are superbly done, and there's also a wonderfully graceful performance of the D790 Deutsche Tänze. But the transcriptions, I'm afraid, tell you more about the transcribers than about Schubert. You end up questioning their inclusion, and the disc's individual elements, however fine, don't add up to a satisfactory whole.
Schubert: Piano Works review – persuasive but puzzling
Tim Ashley
French pianist Bertrand Chamayou focuses on the Wanderer-Fantasie, but strays through arrangements by Liszt and Strauss
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Contributor
Tim Ashley
Tim Ashley is a Guardian classical and opera critic, though he's also keen on literature and philosophy so you might sometimes find him cross-referencing all three. His work has also appeared in Literary Review and Opera magazine and he is author of a biography of Richard Strauss
Tim Ashley
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