Franz Schubert; Arnold Schoenberg - Schubert + Schoenberg (Can Çakmur)

Information

Composer: Franz Schubert; Arnold Schoenberg

• Shubert - Piano Sonata in A Minor, Op. 164, D 537
• Schoenberg - Drei Klavierstücke, Op. 11
• Schubert - Piano Sonata in A Major, D 959

Can Çakmur, piano

Date: 2023

Label: BIS

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Review

From a critical point of view, barring the opportunity to hear an artist publicly, often after the appearance of a particularly impressive recording a period of uncertainty sets in. Was that special recording a one-shot wonder? Will acquaintance with a wider range of the artist’s repertoire meet the high standards of the first glimpse? This release of Schubert and Schoenberg was my first exposure to Can Çakmur since his splendid recording of Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s Schwanengesang (12/20). I am happy to report that it more than fulfils the highest expectations.

The coupling of these two Schubert sonatas is a congenial one. The principal theme of the early A minor Sonata’s second movement would return 11 years later in the Rondo of the magnificent late A major Sonata. Çakmur’s approach to both works is symphonic, within the bounds of appropriate taste and style. Throughout D537, the vivid characterisation of themes seems particularly apt and imaginative. In the concluding Allegro vivace, pure kinaesthetic joy seems barely containable.

In the Olympian climes of the great A major Sonata, D959, Çakmur inspires even greater admiration. The sense of orchestral space is even more suitable to the lofty dimensions of this august work. One of Çakmur’s special gifts is his fluent differentiation between principal material and passagework in Schubert’s highly idiosyncratic keyboard-writing. Be warned: the Andantino slow movement weaves its tragic course with such extraordinary poise and restraint that you may, as I did, have difficulty restraining tears. This movement alone situates this interpretation among the finest I know. The distance between this abyss of heartbreak and the sprightly Scherzo is astonishing in its contrast, which seems to verge on incongruity. Coming at last to the noble finale, where Çakmur neglects no detail, the dimensions of Schubert’s vision on the eve of death are apparent with an immediacy that only the very best of his interpreters are capable of imparting.

The Op 11 Schoenberg pieces exhibit the same depth of discernment evident in the Schubert sonatas. This very distinguished recording should not be missed by anyone interested in fine piano-playing and heartfelt poetic utterance.

-- Patrick Rucker, Gramophone

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Franz Schubert (31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) was an Austrian composer who was extremely prolific during his short lifetime. His output consists of over six hundred secular vocal works (mainly Lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music and a large body of chamber and piano music. Today, Schubert is ranked among the greatest composers of the late Classical era and early Romantic era and is one of the most frequently performed composers of the early nineteenth century. His music is characterized by pleasing tunes while still has "a great wealth of technical finesse".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Schubert

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Arnold Schoenberg (13 September 1874 – 13 July 1951) was an Austrian composer. Schoenberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify innovations in atonality that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century art music. Mentoring Anton Webern and Alban Berg, he became the central figure of the Second Viennese School. In the 1920s, he developed the twelve-tone technique, an influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schoenberg

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Can Çakmur (b. 1997) is the First prize winner of the 10th Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in 2018 and the Scottish International Piano Competition in 2017. He studied with Diane Andersen privately and with Grigory Gruzman at the Franz Liszt University of Music Weimar. A dedicated chamber musician, Can Çakmur’s regular partners are Veriko Tchum­buridze and Dorukhan Doruk (as the Vecando Trio, formed in 2021). His recordings for BIS Records have received critical acclaim worldwide. In 2022 he was appointed to a piano professorship at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance in London.

http://www.cancakmur.com/

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