Hundreds of recordings of
Schubert's two sets of Impromptus have appeared since the release of these recordings in the early 1970s, yet they have themselves gone through several rounds of reissues. The reason is simple: they approach perfection.
Schubert's Impromptus live up to their name with seemingly spontaneous chains of musical ideas, but, as always with
Schubert, the ideas are always intricately connected at a deeper level.
Brendel's genius is to find the balance between poetic effect and inner logic. The sheer lyricism of many passages may surprise listeners who know
Brendel through his supremely insightful but undeniably intellectual readings of
Beethoven, but no less striking is the way each melody seems to flow into the next. Sample one of the famous passages, for example the dreamlike arpeggios at the beginning of the Impromptu in A flat major from the D. 899 set. It is liquid, it is hypnotic, and yet everywhere it seems to move ineluctably forward. This album contains material added to
Brendel's original recordings of the two sets of Impromptus; this appendix was very easy for Philips to do badly, but the collection of lesser-known pieces at the end takes on the quality of a set of encores that the pianist richly deserves, landing on the mysteriously calm and rarely heard Hungarian Melody in B minor, D. 817. The only possible complaint here is that the digital transfers don't do the original LP sound any favors; the piano sounds washed out. For daily listening, however, this remains a landmark of the recorded
Schubert repertoire.