Though the booklet provides no information about Alexander Lonquich (a new name to me, though I see that he has partnered the violinist Frank Peter Zimmerman on record—see review on page 1228), an all-knowing friend tells me that he is a German-trained artist with a goodly share of European feathers in his cap though still only 30. The Nuova Era engineers are not quite as kind to his piano as Decca's for Lupu, Philips's for Brendel and DG's for Pollini. There is just a trace of metal in the sound above a certain dynamic level. But there is nothing hard or cold in Lonquich himself. He impressed me as a genuinely caring Schubertian keenly aware of the music's personal message.
In the Sonata's first movement I even once or twice wondered if his approach might prove a little too impressionable, at the expense of sustained momentum and precision—as, for instance, in the very pronounced hesitation before the surprise pianissimo chord of D flat major in the course of the second subject (first heard at 1' 23''). He also revels in the stealthy low-lying mystery of the development section. In both these contexts Pollini, in particular, is more rhythmically incisive and texturally sharp-cut. Like that artist and Brendel, he chooses a slightly more flowing tempo for the Adagio than the very slow Lupu while at the same time cherishing detail to the full. His unhurried third movement comes as a reminder that (despite the allegro marking) Schubert heads it not Scherzo but Menuetto. And I enjoyed his piquant accentuation in the course of a spirited finale. Obviously in the arrestingly dramatic Brendel, the susceptibly poetic Lupu and the aristocratically refined and discerning Pollini, Lonquich has formidable rivals. But even if at 30 his musical personality is not yet as potently individual as theirs, I'm sure Schubert himself would have appreciated his unfailing honesty and sensitivity.
The Drei Klavierstucke are refreshingly unmannered, always with their contrasting episodes (he wisely respects Schubert's eventual excision of the second episode in No. 1) integrated into a continuous, shapely whole. Again, here Lonquich won me over by speaking to an audience of friends, as it were, rather than trying to project the music to the back row of an outsize auditorium.'