Missouri Classical Music News and Notes

He also made passages like Beethoven’s dreamy slow movement sound like he was making them up on the spot, which is probably the way Beethoven played them (since he often was making them up). He knows the meaning of a shocking harmony change, and doesn’t mind pausing just before, almost to the point of camp. . . .

In Schubert’s big B-flat Sonata, D. 960, Buchbinder showed us a more buttoned-down side of himself. This was a loving but not fawning tribute to one of Schubert’s last musical utterances, with suffused colors and diaphanous twists of fortune.

Again we found ourselves hearing new countermelodies and surprising inner voices. Even if I didn’t feel deeply moved throughout, by the end I felt I had heard — there buried in cascades of notes — some aspect of the real Schubert.