Franz Schubert: Ländler: Pierre-Laurent Aimard

RONDO, the classical music & jazz magazine, celebrates Pierre-Laurent Aimard's "Schubert: Ländler" and the melancholy of "353018". Read the article by Guido Fischer here:

Around 500 dances for piano two hands by Franz Schubert have survived in manuscript and printed form. The focus was on all the fashionable dances of the time: waltzes and minuets, country dances and ecossaises, German dances, gallops and cotillons - Schubert mastered them all. And as soon as he took his place at the piano at private gatherings, house balls or the convivial "Schubertiades", which were first organised in 1821, things got lively.

Now the French master pianist Pierrre-Laurent Aimard has recorded an entire album of 45 selected little pieces - some of which last just half a minute. These include excerpts from the "20 Waltzes" op. 127 as well as the "Viennese Ladies Ländler and Ecoissaises" op. 67 and the "Valses sentimentales" op. 50.

Aimard recorded these pieces on a Steinway grand piano from 1956, an instrument with a slightly melancholy tuning that has the right sound for this miniature Schubertian cosmos. And Aimard elicits from it precisely those degrees and states of romantic longing, suffering and happiness that can be found in Schubert's great piano and lied works.

Rather than in convivial surroundings, Aimard prefers to do his lonesome rounds here with all the Ländler and the like - and one listens to him with fascination, even spellbound.