SCHUBERT: Wandererfantasie; Piano Sonata in G major, D. 894
Elisabeth Leonskaja, piano
Deutsche Grammophon
The late recordings of Elisabeth Leonskaja have about them a certain gravitas—that deep-browed Russian seriousness which can illuminate Brahms or late Beethoven with almost uncomfortable intensity. But this Schubert disc, rescued from the Teldex vaults of 1988 and now reissued under DG’s bargain imprimatur, catches her at a transitional moment. The results are… well, complicated.
The Wandererfantasie begins promisingly enough. Leonskaja’s opening has the requisite heroic thrust, and her left hand—always a marker of pianistic breeding—maintains admirable independence through the figurations. She understands the architectural demands of this peculiar hybrid, where sonata form gets stretched across four movements welded into one continuous argument.
But then comes that magical shift into the "Adagio", where Schubert quotes his own song “Der Wanderer,” and here the interpretive choices turn puzzling. Leonskaja treats the transition as mere modulatory machinery rather than metaphysical portal. The chords arrive dutifully, correctly voiced, perfectly in tune with the piano’s temperament—yet they fail to shimmer with that quality of Sehnsucht that makes this passage so devastating in the hands of a Brendel or Pollini. It’s the difference between reading poetry and experiencing it.
The variations that follow display her considerable technical command—the passagework in the "scherzo" section crackles with energy, fingers moving with that particular kind of Soviet-trained evenness. Yet one senses calculation where spontaneity should reign. The "finale", marked "Allegro", proceeds with determined efficiency but lacks the transcendent quality that transforms virtuosity into vision.
With the G major Sonata, D. 894, we enter different territory entirely. This work—which Schumann called “the most perfect in form and conception” among Schubert’s sonatas—poses interpretive problems that have confounded greater pianists than Leonskaja. The opening movement alone spans some twenty minutes here, and maintaining narrative coherence across such Brucknerian expanses requires not just concentration but a kind of spiritual stamina.
Leonskaja’s approach emphasizes structural clarity. Fair enough. Her tempo for the Molto moderato e cantabile falls within conventional bounds, and she traces the harmonic progressions with scholarly precision. Listen to how she voices the second theme—each inner line carefully calibrated, the bass providing solid foundation. This is conscientious music-making of a high order.
But conscientiousness isn’t quite enough, is it? Schubert’s late sonatas demand something more elusive—an ability to inhabit duration itself, to make those extended stretches of relative harmonic stasis feel like glimpses of eternity rather than mere temporal passage. Leonskaja’s tonal palette, while refined, lacks the subtle gradations that could illuminate the music’s interior landscape. The first movement, despite moments of genuine beauty, never quite achieves that sense of floating in timeless space.
The "Andante" fares better. Here the more contained proportions suit her deliberate approach, and she finds real poetry in the middle section’s darkening harmonies. The "Menuetto" bounces along with appropriate rustic charm—though one wishes for more dynamic shading in the trio.
That "finale", though. Allegretto, Schubert writes, and the marking matters enormously. Too fast and the music turns trivial; too slow and it drags. Leonskaja chooses a middle path that emphasizes the movement’s dance character without quite capturing its peculiar mixture of joy and melancholy. She plays all the right notes in all the right order, as the old joke goes, but the essential mystery eludes her grasp.
The recorded sound doesn’t help. Teldex Studio in Berlin, November 1988—the engineers have given us a somewhat harsh, closely-miked piano that emphasizes percussive attack at the expense of tonal bloom. There’s insufficient ambience, and the instrument’s upper register acquires an almost brittle quality in forte passages. One longs for the warmer acoustic Teldec provided for, say, András Schiff’s earlier Schubert recordings.
This reissue will doubtless find admirers, particularly among those who value clarity and structural coherence above all else. Leonskaja is, after all, a serious artist with impeccable credentials and genuine musical intelligence. But when the competition includes Brendel’s philosophical depth, Lupu’s ineffable poetry, Uchida’s spiritual intensity, or Richter’s towering authority, this reading—competent though it surely is—occupies a decidedly secondary tier.
At budget price? Perhaps. But even economy shouldn’t require us to settle for merely adequate Schubert when the sublime versions remain readily available.
