Octo_Russ

Schubert - 3 Klavierstucke [Tabe] 

Here's the companion work on this disc, to the great last Piano Sonata by Schubert i played a couple of months ago [21st March 2011], these 3 pieces fall under the shadow of the Impromptus, it was Brahms's idea to call them Klavierstucke rather than Impromptus, i think Brahms had a problem with what to call his own piano works, so he had a tendency to call them Klavierstucke, supposedly there was meant to be a fourth piece to this set, and it would have conveniently made 3 books of 4 Impromptus, the other thing which goes against this triptych is the length of a compact disc, the first 8 Impromptus neatly fit on one disc, and these other 3 seem like left overs in comparison, but they're a great work in their own right.

Kyoko Tabe is Japanese, born in 1967, she made this recording in 1993, on the front cover a nicely glowing Kyoko Tabe [photo by Toshiaki Takeuchi], very expertly composed, flowing hair, with well placed hands, and nice lettering, a very visually appealing product, Denon are so very good at this.

Each of these three pieces are tremendously interesting and enjoyable, they're very much in sonata form, with different central episodes to give variety and colour, on this listen i liked the last piece, it's easily the shortest of the three, in fact half as long as the other two, and makes a nice finale, it's a nice piano sound, maybe a little too warm, slightly reverberant, bit bass heavy in the recording, i just love the way the treble right hand notes [0:09-0:11] just slide in perfectly with the left hand playing, a very slight overlap which is joyous, and the right hand treble rolls [0:21-0:28], just really thrilling, plus there's this lovely bass warbling in the left hand [0:32+], the central section comes in really soon, and is more peaceful, i like it when Schubert uses the higher treble notes [1:24-1:44], and then later some more treble [2:36-2:55], at the very beginning starting to sound like Satie!, and then the opening is repeated, and to hear those warbling bass notes again is fantastic [4:23+], short-ish but full of character and fascination, Tabe plays it with excitement.

Here's Carlo Grante playing the third Klavierstucke on YouTube.