Composer: Franz Peter Schubert
Performer: Aimi Kobayashi
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Warner
Catalogue: 2173241693
Release: 2024
Size: 2.56 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
4 Impromptus, D935
01. No. 1 in F Minor
02. No. 2 in A-Flat Major
03. No. 3 in B-Flat Major
04. No. 4 in F Minor
Piano Sonata No. 19 in C minor, D958
05. I. Allegro
06. II. Adagio
07. III. Menuetto. Allegro – Trio
08. IV. Allegro
09. Rondo for piano duet in A major, D951
Aimi Kobayashi, who rose to prominence as a prizewinner at the 2021 International Chopin Piano Competition, has been praised by Gramophone as a pianist who can “rivet the attention through fine-drawn line and hushed dynamics as much as through vivid gesture and brute force”.
She now follows Warner Classics albums of Chopin and Liszt with a Schubert recital: the four Impromptus D935, the Sonata in C minor D958 and the Rondo in A major D951, a substantial piece for two players at one piano.
Joining her for the duet is Kyohei Sorita, a fellow laureate of the Chopin competition – and also her husband.
“Schubert’s music has a special beauty that is unique to him,” she says. “The pieces I recorded for the album were written towards the end of his life, when he was 30 or 31 years old. I will turn 30 in 2025 … I thought it would be meaningful for me to play them at the same age that this composer of genius wrote them …Schubert’s works are lonely, but full of tenderness … It is as if the composer is conscious of death, but in the midst of it, he discovers a little happiness and expresses it in his music.”
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