Schubert and Brendel are repackaged once again, and this time in a compilation which concentrates the ear and mind particularly enrichingly. These are the late sonatas recorded in Salzburg and London late in 1971 and early in 1972, together with three Impromptus dating from the summer of 1974.
Brendel himself wrote, of the C minor Sonata, that ''the leading character in this tragedy is being chased and cornered, and looks in vain for a way of escape''. The insistent rhythmic movement which can irritate in some of Brendel's playing, here expresses entirely appropriately the unnerving sense of disquiet which pervades the whole work. It manifests itself in the left hand's biting hard into the right hand's song, in the chilling evenness of scalic passages, and in the oppressive closeness of repeated figures and it is conjured by Brendel into a visionary beauty in the variations of the central Adagio. In this movement serenity and unease coexist as startlingly as in Winterreise's tableau of the three suns.
In the A major Sonata, Brendel allows himself to follow Schubert's own flights of fancy and sweet digressions, moulding them with an unmistakably firm sense of ultimate purpose and direction. The slow movement's song is held back by its own halting, tolling second beat, only to be released into the nonchalant virtuosity of the Scherzo.
This is a virtuosity of placing and timing, and it characterizes, too, the slow movement of the B flat Sonata, surely one of the most beautiful performances of this movement on disc. The entire sonata, indeed, has a rare sense of emotional and intellectual coherence.
The Impromptus show Brendel apparently having fun. The exuberant energy of the E flat minor is answered by the gentleness and mischief of the E flat, something one tends to hear rather less frequently in his playing at the moment.'