Homage to Schubert

The title of this collection comes from György Kurtág's evocatively chordal miniature, Hommage à Schubert, a bare minute long. The six "Schubert reminiscences" of Jörg Widmann's Idyll und Abgrund are more explicit and wide-ranging – Schubert seen through a distorting mirror that furnishes contemporary touches of brilliance and violence. These two works are framed by two Schubert sonatas, chosen as carefully for contrast as the tributes themselves: the small-scale Sonata in A, D664, and the altogether grander, sometimes imperious Sonata in D, D850. Benjamin Hochman voices both with caring clarity, but sometimes enunciates the music with point-making hesitations, slightly blunting what he himself calls this "subtle, intimate and mesmerising music". He's much surer in the Kurtág and Widmann. url.ie/e8oo