Schubert - Impromptu No. 4 Op. 90 D.899 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Franz Schubert's Four Impromptus, Op. 90, D.899 performed by pianist Sylvia Capova.

Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) effectively founded Russian literature, elevating his mother tongue to match the wit and penetrating observation of the French, Spanish and English writers he admired. He was revered even through the Soviet years, the hundredth anniversary of his death being grandly commemorated in 1936 during Stalin's reign. It was for that occasion that the two sets of Pushkin songs by Russia's leading composers of that time - Prokofiev and Shostakovich - were originally composed. In later life, Shostakovich became friends with the English composer, Benjamin Britten, who also befriended the cellist and pianist Mstislav Rostropovich (a sometime pupil of Shostakovich's) and his wife the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. It was specifically for the latter two artists that Britten in 1965 composed The Poet's Echo.

The poet's words awaken the song that sleeps dreamily in all things, as Eichendorff aptly put it. According to Romantic artistic aesthetics, however, only instrumental music can reveal the inexpressible. The two works by Brahms and Schubert presented here harbour auratic traits that can be traced back to the origin of their lyrical themes in their own songs.