Can Cakmur - Schubert + Brahms - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

Three years after recording Franz Schubert's Schwanengesang (arranged by Liszt), pianist Can Çakmur launches a new series called Schubert. Describing the Viennese composer as Incha con-stant companionInch in his life, Çakmur's aim here is to juxtapose his complete major piano solo compositions with works by other composers that were inspired by his music, thus providing the opportunity to see these works in a new light. While making up a near complete anthology of Schubert's completed major piano music, each disc is also intended as a self-sufficient recital. In this first instalment, two sonatas by Schubert, respectively D 537 and D 959, are juxtaposed with Arnold Schoenberg's Three Pieces op. 11. The reason for this combination is that, firstly, the same theme is shared but treated differently in Schubert's sonatas, and secondly, Schubert and Schoenberg seemingly sharing the same conception where the natural flow and direction of the music appear consciously deconstructed. With different means and a hundred years apart, both Schubert and Schoenberg, the former with his aversion to formal boundaries, the latter with his efforts against the natural tendencies of Western harmony, managed to strengthen the subjective expression of their music.

For his series called Schubert+, pianist Can cakmur juxtaposes the complete major piano solo compositions by the Viennese composer with works by others who were inspired by his music, thus providing the opportunity to see these works in a new light. While making up a near complete anthology of Schubert's completed major piano music, each disc is also intended as a self-contained recital. In this third instalment, cakmur presents not only a work by the 20th-century composer Ernst Krenek but also Krenek's completion of an unfinished sonata by Schubert. In the process, Krenek assimilated the Schubertian language so well that the result is astonishing. As cakmur says, 'I would find it difficult to spot where Schubert ends and Krenek begins if it wasn't specified in the score.' Krenek, whose career spanned more than seven decades, was a prolific composer who embraced a host of styles. For his Second Piano Sonata, composed in the 1920s, he pays homage to Schubert by adopting some of his techniques, though the music owes much more to early 20th-century Paris than to 19th-century Vienna. A fascinating and neglected work to be discovered through the prism of Schubert.

For the fifth instalment of the critically acclaimedSchubert+ series, Can Cakmur juxtaposes the Viennesecomposer with his illustrious elder Ludwig vanBeethoven, for the first time in this series.After establishing his mastery of the lied genre, Schubertstill had to show his full potential in the realm of pianosonatas, a quintessentially Beethovenian form. In hisSonata in A major, D 664, he abandons the traditionallyoppositional nature of the sonata in favour of a melody-based narrative in which landscapes appear to changegradually, as if seen from a traveller's perspective, thusoffering a conception that is as new as it is personal.Beethoven is represented here by a series of variations,a genre in which he also excelled. The 32 Variations in Cminor range from tender yearning to an emotionalturmoil reminiscent of the 'Appassionata' Sonata.In the Sonata in C minor, D 958, composed in 1828, thefirst of his towering final trilogy, Schubert staked hisclaim to be seen as Beethoven's successor as a writer ofpiano sonatas. In a work that Can Cakmur sees as atribute to Beethoven, Schubert achieves a synthesis ofthe master's influence and the lyricism of his own earlysonatas. Just weeks before his death, the youngercomposer finally sits beside the older master andconverses with him on equal terms.