Schubert - Piano Sonatas
Boris Zarankin
Doremi DHR-71153
If the listener didn’t know it before, this CD confirms that Boris Zarankin possesses an ardent empathy with Schubert. From the opening bars of the first movement of the great Sonata in B-Flat Major, marked molto moderato, there is almost a quasi religious awakening and as the music unfolds, further dimensions are revealed that one does not hear in other versions of this familiar work. Well, not quite. Hearing Zarankin conjured up the performance by Valery Afanassiev recorded live at the Lockenhaus Festival in 1986 that has lingered in my memory as an interpretation with the same intense, poetic introversion. However, listening to that performance once again, as attractive as it is, Zarankin is the more poetic, realizing the tragedy of Schubert playing out the last chapter of his life.
In both sonatas Boris Zarankin is in a class of his own, fully justifying his venturing into such frequently charted repertoire. Zarankin has his own ideas about playing these sonatas but I sense that they are also Schubert’s.
These recordings were made last August in Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto and engineered by Clive Allen who is responsible for the eminently truthful and dynamic, wide-range sound.
