一聽音樂網

85-year-old Austrian pianist Paul Badura-Skoda offers no fewer than three complete recordings of the Schubert Piano Sonata in B flat major, D. 960, with the Drei Klavierstücke, D. 946, as a curtain raiser. The three versions are played on three different pianos, a Graf fortepiano of 1826, a modern Steinway, and a 1923 B?sendorfer that for piano buffs may be worth the price of admission to this two-CD set. It's an exceptionally warm, mellow instrument, and Badura-Skoda crafts an interpretation to match it. You might think that this effort represents a rumination on the virtues and disadvantages of historical instruments from Badura-Skoda after his long career, but in fact that doesn't seem to be what he has in mind. He writes in his own notes that it is "simply because of the uniqueness of this sonata.