Elisabeth Leonskaja pf

Warner Classics 

Two years ago this great pianist – born and trained in Soviet Tbilisi, but now a naturalised Austrian – released a superb set of the Mozart sonatas. She has now done the same for Schubert's sonatas, and it is a towering achievement.

The early works offer an illuminating study in how a composer finds his voice. In Schubert's case this meant doing pastiches of other composers – Mozart in No 2 and Haydn in No 5. In the last movement of the third he seems to be trying prophetically to wed some of Chopin's pianistic techniques to the sound of his own voice. To these early works – Sonata No 1 was written when he was 18 – Leonskaja brings an ennobling touch.

The emergence of Schubert’s voice is a gradual process. It doesn’t take long for the contrast between cantabile grace and thunderous chordal aggression to emerge as one of his favourite strategies. It takes longer for the penny to drop that sudden switches between major and minor modes can furnish great emotional power. Bit by bit he learns how to explore the potential of remote keys, and to put disparate elements together to create an indestructible edifice.

© MARCO BORGGREVE

Sonata No 13 in A major marks his sudden emergence as a supreme master of the form: every note is perfectly placed. And from this point onwards, Leonskaja delivers the goods with sublime assurance, simply letting the piano sing. The biggest challenge of these later works often lies in their seeming plainness, their beauty residing in infinitesimal inflections.

Some of the slow movements are meditations, others are imbued with a glowing sweetness; some, like the Reliquie, seem to grow out of a Lied. The pearl of the cycle is Leonskaja’s recording of D960. Its first movement goes at an exceptionally leisurely pace and offers the purest lyricism, gravely compelling in its sad pensiveness; even its bass trills have a music of their own. Extraordinary.