Early Music Review
May 2002
This disc is particularly interesting because Schubert,
Felix Mendelssohn and Schumann all owned a Graf fortepiano and it is a
Graf instrument built in about 1835 that is used in this recording.
Penelope Crawford has chosen repertoire that illustrates the development
of romantic music and her performances exhibit flair as well as insight.
Her Schubert has a pleasing variety of articulation with a nice detached
style used in parts of the Andante.
Mendelssohn's Op. 30/2 Song without words is a great
piece performed with panache and a fine sense of rhythm. Listeners will
also enjoy the artist's use of the different pedals particularly in the
Schumann, where Vogel als Prophet (Prophet Bird) has great atmosphere.
The recording quality is first class.
Fanfare Magazine
October 2001
The Schubert Sonata is the major work on this CD, and
its performance by Penelope Crawford, an American pianist who specialized
in period instrument, raises two immediate issues. The first has to do
with the inclusion of the sonata under the rubric of “Romantic piano.”
The instrument played here is an 1835 restored fortepiano by the Viennese
maker Conrad Graf, more contemporaneous with the true early-Romantic piano
composers, Mendelssohn and Schumann. The sonata by Schubert, however,
composed in 1825, is still very much a work in the Classical tradition, as
are most of Schubert’s instrumental works. This is not so much a matter
of chronology or of Schubert’s expressiveness but rather of his use- in
the sonatas, string quartets, trios, and symphonies-of the formal
structures and conventions of Classical sonata-type works. But this issue
is considerably less important than that of appropriate performance
practice by the pianist, for Crawford follows the lead of other
fortepianists such as Malcolm Bilson and Robert Levin in adding ornaments
and making changes in Schubert’s piano music. Incongruously, most of
Crawford’s additions are made in the second movement, one of Schubert’s
most ingenious variation sets-a movement in which the melodic line of each
variation is richly ornamented by Schubert himself. If there is a reason
to add to the composer’s invention here, it eludes me. There are a few
other instances of distortion of the score, such as holding a climactic
diminished chord in the Scherzo (measure 55) four measures linger than
notated, presumably to emphasize the rhetorical point. Does the pianist
believe she is improving on Schubert? It seems rather audacious to me. (I
wonder whether she would find room for improvement in Beethoven’s
Diabelli” Varaitions, composed a few years earlier.) If Crawford has
discovered any historical documentation justifying this practice in a
Schubert piano sonata, she should mention it in her otherwise excellent
booklet notes, and certainly she should let the listener (or reader of the
booklet) know what she is doing.
On a more positive note, Crawford performances of the
group of Mendelssohn Songs without Words and Schumann’s cycle of
Romantic miniatures, Waldszenen, are sensitive and tasteful. The one piece
of Fanny Mendelssohn included, titled O Traum der Jugend, is a lovely
example of this genre, and fits well among Felix’s pieces.
The Graf is a truly lovely instrument, warm and bright
in all registers, with a responsive and even action, very close in sound
to the modern piano. It is easy to understand why the Graf was favored by
the composers of the early-Romantic generation. Recorded in Ann Arbor,
Michigan, where Penelope Crawford is on the faculty of the University,
this CD has excellent recorded sound.
Susan Kagan
