Franz Schubert; Johannes Brahms - Schubert + Brahms (Can Çakmur)

Information

Composer: Franz Schubert; Johannes Brahms

• Schubert - Impromptus, D 935 / Op. posth. 142
• Brahms - Vier Klavierstücke, Op. 119
• Schubert - Drei Klavierstücke, D 946

Can Çakmur, piano

Date: 2024

Label: BIS

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Review

‘Schubert + Brahms’ is the second issue in a projected series showing Schubert in often-surprising relation to other composers. The case for Schubert’s prophecy is made acutely clear in Çakmur’s accompanying notes, and his previous album, dedicated to Schubert and Schoenberg, underlines his point. Schubert and Brahms may be a less radical combination but the two composers’ sharing of a profound and unsettling emotional ambiguity is made crystal-clear.

And it is this central quality, whether at times savage in Schubert or bittersweet in Brahms, that Çakmur captures to a rare and audacious degree. Already, at the age of 26, he is an artist of rare perception. Invariably, there is that sense of benign ideas clouded over with page after page perceived, as it were, ‘through a glass darkly’. And it is in this sense that it would be difficult to imagine a less evasive Schubertian, or one who turns such an ironic eye on the amicable and domestic world of the ‘Schubertiads’ (the play-through by friends of music beyond their comprehension).

Opening with the second book of Impromptus, D935, Çakmur is gratifyingly straightforward in No 2 yet never without those subtle and ear-catching details, that acute sense of harmony and rhythm that come to seem inseparable from his playing. In No 3 he finds all the wistfulness of the ‘Rosamunde’-based theme and a magical hesitancy in the first variation, as if on the edge of a whispered confidence. What finesse, too, in the gently cascading Variation 4, yet with all such relative quiet banished in the final Impromptu, which is given with a snapping fury together with an uncompromising sense of the eerie.

In Brahms’s Op 119 Intermezzos and Rhapsody, Çakmur’s performance is again alive with individual touches, more peppery and sharply accented than usual in the jocular No 3, grandly rather than feverishly paced in the Rhapsody. But it is in Schubert’s Drei Klavierstücke that Çakmur finds the truest outlet for his penetrating imagination. From him No 1 is a frenetic chase against the clock and can rarely have sounded more driven or agitated, while in the central section you are once more reminded of how Schubert’s volatility could rise to the surface when you least expect it. In No 2 a benign opening is quickly clouded by music of a rhetorical menace, while few pianists have achieved a more intense stress on the darting cross-rhythms of No 3.

Very much in the early stages of his career, and with triumphs in the Hamamatsu and Scottish International Competitions well behind him, if Çakmur finds himself in the company of such celebrated Schubertians as Kempff, Brendel, Lupu and Perahia (to name but four), he makes his mark in his own singular way. If Kempff, a great if radically different Schubertian, resolves Schubert’s pain in sublimity, Çakmur convinces you no less of a visionary and troubled spirit.

-- Bryce Morrison, 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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Johannes Brahms (7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer and pianist. In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influence were considerable. Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, and voice and chorus. Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. An uncompromising perfectionist, Brahms destroyed some of his works and left others unpublished. Brahms is often considered both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters, with a highly romantic nature embedded within.

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

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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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