One might be forgiven for initially thinking that this recital featuring works for cello and piano by Franz Schubert, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg was, well, a stunt. After all, aside from their birth in the city of Vienna, what do the three composers have in common? Schubert was the quintessential master of lyrical Austro-German romanticism, while Webern and Berg were two of the three most reviled masters of atonal Austro-German expressionism -- the third, of course, was Arnold Schoenberg -- and one might think they'd be ...
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One might be forgiven for initially thinking that this recital featuring works for cello and piano by Franz Schubert, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg was, well, a stunt. After all, aside from their birth in the city of Vienna, what do the three composers have in common? Schubert was the quintessential master of lyrical Austro-German romanticism, while Webern and Berg were two of the three most reviled masters of atonal Austro-German expressionism -- the third, of course, was Arnold Schoenberg -- and one might think they'd be an impossible coupling. Not so: in this beautifully played and brilliantly programmed recital by cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and pianist Alexandre Tharaud, the works of Schubert, Webern, and Berg go together like a ménage à trois. A passionate but tender performance of Schubert's Arpeggione opens the disc, followed by alternations of five beguiling transcriptions of his songs and his D major Violin Sonata with an exquisitely ethereal performance of Webern's Drei kleine Stücke and an...
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