Bertrand Chamayou and Leif Ove Andsnes have been playing this music together since 2016, when Andsnes invited Chamayou to open the inaugural Rosendal Chamber Music Festival. The years of shared experience bear fruit in this fresh release.
The program is tightly curated, consisting of all four of Schubert’s duet piano works from 1828, the year of his death. Heard together, the Fantasia, the Lebensstürme (D. 947), the Rondo in A major (D. 951), and the Fugue in E minor (D. 952) form something of a portrait of a mind on the edge, lurching between desolation and optimism. But this is Schubert, so we also hear the pull of pure song.
The Fantasia is the gravitational center of the programme, where the duo’s interpretive approach is most clearly defined. Chamayou and Andsnes find the Fantasia’s darkness through harmonic transparency. The way they bring their two voices together and then converge is consistently illuminating, and they keep the frequent contrapuntal doublings astonishingly clear throughout.
Andsnes takes the primo part in the Fantasia and Rondo, with Chamayou stepping into that role for the Lebensstürme and Fugue. The trading of places is apparent in a good sense, with a slight shift in the music’s center of gravity, a different quality of urgency.
Lebensstürme gets a reading of concentrated forward drive, less turbulent than some recordings, but also more coherent. The Rondo, often treated as a trifle, finds an appealing charm and pace, without rushing. And the Fugue, which some teams seem to treat as a chore of completion, sounds here like an actual discovery.
The piano is captured in beautifully captured in flattering Atmos surround audio. The church acoustic, at St. Jude-on-the-Hill in London, brings warmth and spaciousness, without any of the ambient smear that afflicts some church recordings.
For disc collectors, a note: this is a relatively slim set, running just under 50 minutes. If you are looking for a more generous survey of Schubert’s four-hand repertoire, perhaps including the Grand Duo or the Divertissement à la hongroise, you will have to look elsewhere. But the discipline of the program is also a strength.
Favorite Moment
I keep returning to the Largo of the Fantasia for repeated listening. Listen for the passage of contrasting calm, around two-thirds of the way through the movement. Chamayou and Andsnes play this passage with sustained tranquility, without any self-conscious attempt to project its sorrow. The two voices converge on a single sustained harmony, and then the texture dissolves. It’s a breath-taking effect.
Further Listening
Schubert: Fantasy in F Minor, Sonata in C Major – Murray Perahia, Radu Lupu (CBS/Sony, 1984). The Perahia/Lupu recording remains an enduring benchmark recording of the Fantasia. Lupu’s extraordinary tonal sensitivity and Perahia’s singing line produce a reading that seems to hover just above the ground. It’s more ethereal than the Chamayou/Andsnes, less interested in contrapuntal clarity, more focused on the long melodic arc. Take your pick, both versions serve the music well.
Britten at Aldeburgh (incl. Fantasia in F Minor) – Sviatoslav Richter, Benjamin Britten (Decca, 1972). This legendary live recording from the Aldeburgh Festival is in a category of its own: two giants of the 20th-century musical world, with aesthetic backgrounds that could hardly be more different, finding unexpected magic together. Compared to Chamayou and Andsnes, this is rough-edged in execution and more nakedly exposed in emotional weight.
