Schubert: Piano Variations

Yontov, Yevgeny

8.573707

We tend to forget just how much music Franz Schubert composed in the thirty-one years of his short life, this new release containing works from his teenage years. It was a pleasing theme that Schubert took from a quartet by his friend, Anselm Hüttenbrenner, from which he fashioned thirteen variations of a most delightful disposition. It must certainly have captured the attention of amateur pianists of the time, the music’s roots going back to the Baroque era, though the mercurial tenth variation would have proved a challenge. Two years earlier, when he was just eighteen, and already teaching in his father’s schoolroom, he had completed the Ten Variations dedicated to Antonio Salieri. The theme is marked ‘Andante’ and is stately, though the variations that follow are more light-hearted and have a charming simplicity of construction.
The programme ends with a substantial but essentially quiet Fantasie in C. Thought to be by Schubert, it was not discovered until 1962. The remainder of the disc is given to that old cliché, ‘the shavings from the master craftsman’s bench’—including two versions of the G major Adagio—and will fill a small hole in Naxos’s catalogue. Played by the young Israeli pianist, Yevgeny Yontov, who is still a student with a number of important competition successes to his name. He enjoys the freshness of approach the music requires, while he produces an excellently clean articulation. The recording comes from sessions at Yale University, in the United States, and is of excellent quality. • © 2017 David’s Review Corner

CD x 1

Naxos

28/03/2017

0747313370771