The sound environment of the Immanuelskirche in Wuppertal, Germany, is not what the original listeners of
Schubert
's
Impromptus
would have heard, yet one can understand what drew the attention of the
BIS
label's engineers. Fortepianist
Ronald Brautigam
here plays a copy (by builder
Paul McNulty
) of an 1819 Graf instrument, and it is an extraordinary thing. Hear the shades that ripple through the instrument in the opening bars of the
Impromptu No. 1 in C minor, Op. 90, D. 899
, or the sense of entering an enchanted hall in the third impromptu of the set. However, a great instrument would be nothing without intelligent interpretations, and these
Brautigam
supplies in abundance. He somewhat deemphasizes the melodies, which may seem like a strange thing to do with this greatest of all melodists, but he replaces the melodicism with a range of other effects, reveling in articulation and piano textures that would have been entirely new and thrilling to
's hearers. Listen to the way he pushes the tempo slightly in the main material of the
Impromptu No. 2 in A flat major, Op. 142, D. 935
, for an idea. Each of these little pieces, whose profundities are revealed only through a lifetime of study, is fully thought through and new in conception. This is a superb outing from one of the absolute masters of historical piano performance. ~ James Manheim