The British pianist's two-year Schubert world tour is giving him new insights into the composer.

The works in this program were composed after Liszt abandoned the life of a touring virtuoso and settled in Weimar. There, in Goethe’s city, he composed his Faust Symphony, and a Faustian program has sometimes been attributed to his Piano Sonata. The 23-year-old Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili would agree. In her liner notes she finds parallels with Faust throughout the program. Yet while her writings suggest that all you need to master this music is a metaphysical context, she neglects to mention the physical side (probably through modesty). Buniatishvili’s technical prowess enables her to combine energy with precision at a level comparable to Argerich – indeed this is the most exciting debut performance of the Liszt Sonata since Argerich recorded it in 1960. Her intellectual rigour also allows her to plot the mercurial changes of pace, weight and speed that are built into its structure. Her allegros are imbued with Faustian recklessness. Her Liebestraum radiates a purity associated with Marguerite, while her Mephisto Waltz has power but also a light touch that can only be labelled Mephistophelian. She has two attributes necessary for a Lisztian: she never bangs the piano in double fortes, and she makes everything sound if not…

Tiberghien and Ibragimova maintain the wonderful synergy of their two previous albums in the final instalment of this riveting series. As with the others, it’s a challenge as to which of the countless felicities to mention first. The fluctuating dynamics are as good a point as any: Beethoven dubbed these works, in effect, piano sonatas with violin accompaniment (like Mozart’s) and the pair acknowledge this throughout, with long passages where the piano is rightly dominant. The three sonatas are well contrasted: the playful and witty Op 12 in E flat with its variable pulse in the first movement is perfectly captured by the pair, the rather banal theme (described as “dim-witted” in the liner notes) of the final movement completely transformed by the magic of their partnership. The Op 30 A-major Sonata is deliciously suave and Tiberghien is dominant in the slow movement, with Ibragimova reticent and the pianist dispatching the demanding variations of the last movement with panache. The series ends, appropriately, with the mighty Kreutzer sonata, perhaps the only work in this genre with the sense of drama and power we take for granted in Beethoven’s music. Here, Ibragimova is amazing: she may look gamine but her tone…

Four players with a big vision of music feel like an entity in themselves.

In 1819 the publisher Anton Diabelli asked several composers each to write a single variation on a fairly nondescript waltz of his own. Beethoven set the task aside for four years – possibly the collegiate nature of the commission held little appeal – but eventually returned to Diabelli’s theme, proceeding to de- and re-construct every aspect of it in a monumental set of 33 variations. A major work, it postdates the piano sonatas and was composed at the same time as the Choral Symphony. This is late Beethoven, the deaf and obsessive composer who pushed the envelope and for whom an executant’s stamina was no longer a consideration. The variations display a double dose of virtuosity. For one thing, they stretch the pianist technically: the rapid Variations 17, 25 and 28 are as dazzling and difficult as any of Chopin’s Etudes. They also showcase the brilliance of Beethoven’s musical imagination. Paul Lewis has recorded Beethoven’s sonatas and concertos to great acclaim. While he responds to the gradations of tone and dynamics required, he is more “old-school” than some other young pianists (Brendel was his mentor). Some critics have found Lewis stolid, even dull: I don’t think so at all. His…

These are invigorating accounts of three Mozart string quartets that neatly encapsulate the history of his writing for this musical medium. Mozart’s string quartets fall into three major brackets of works spread over 17 or 18 years, each represented here. The first quartet K157 in C major dates from 1772, when Mozart was just 17 years old. The quartet form was undergoing rapid development at this stage and Mozart, fresh from his musical explorations across Europe, was brimming with ideas. His youthful zest is already tempered by deep reflection, as shown in the astonishing depth of the Allegro which makes up the first movement. His prodigious development as a musician is reflected in the clutch of works known as the “Haydn” quartets. Here is Mozart in 1784, not quite 30 but already in his full maturity as a composer. The performance here of the Hunt quartet (K458) shows why this bracket of quartets is regarded as the finest he ever wrote. Mozart evidently thought he had pretty well exhausted his explorations of the genre, for although he was later commissioned to write a further set, he never completed the proposed cycle. Here from that final series is one of his…

The recorder virtuoso explains why she welcomes the tooting and squealing of children's ensembles.

Countertenor Andreas Scholl has discovered that returning to his roots has enriched not only his personal life, but his artistic endeavours too. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in