Piano students, amateur players will love a new album with mini-medleys of short Schubert dances

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By Jacob Stockinger

Most classical piano recordings feature works that go beyond the technical and interpretive capabilities of any musicians except  professionals such as concert artists and teachers.

But a new release on the Pentagon label by the acclaimed French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard (below) — who is known for tackling and mastering such thorny and virtuosic repertoire as Bartok’s piano concertos and Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata — is the ideal exception.

The recital features small groupings of some 100 dances by Franz Schubert that are short, tuneful and played without repeats.(you can hear a selection in the YouTube video at the bottom.) Most importantly, they are technically within the reach of intermediate or above piano students and amateur pianists — and The Ear speaks from personal experience.

Here is a review from the UKJ where the album has already been named an outstanding release of 2024 by the Times of London:

https://theclassicreview.com/album-reviews/review-schubert-landler-pierre-laurent-aimard-piano/?utm_source=Mailchimp&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=May_24_Newsletter_5

And here is a short preface and interview with Aimard that are featured on Apple Music Classical:

“Even the great composers aren’t immune to changing fashions. Pianist Alfred Brendel’s advocacy in the mid-20th century of Beethoven’s Bagatelles helped them emerge from obscurity to become regulars in concert and on record.

“In a similar vein, Schubert’s Ländler will surely enjoy a long-overdue resurgence, thanks to Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s beautifully programmed selection of 45 of these tiny musical miracles.

“What really struck me is how Schubert is essentially as deep, as tender, as fresh, as pure in these pieces as he is in his best and even longest compositions,” the French pianist tells Apple Music Classical. “There is no banality here — they are such treasures.”

“The Ländler was a triple-time dance popular in rural Germany—the waltz’s country sibling. Schubert composed almost 450 Ländler for solo piano over the course of his 31 years, variously titled as German Dances, Waltzes, Ecossaises (another type of triple-time dance, originally from Scotland), or, simply, Ländler. Some are substantial works of a couple of minutes, others comprise of just a few bars and barely last 30 seconds. 

“There’s little doubt Schubert would have composed many of them for private entertainment, whether for his own delight or for others to enjoy in the comfort of their own homes. (Below you can see Schubert at the keyboard during a private Schubertiade.)

“During the pandemic, it was the Ländler’s private element that attracted Aimard to them.

“During COVID, we had no stage, no public life, and no need for any applause,” he says. “For me, these pieces represent a return to a form of intimacy, of artistic intimacy. That’s something I love all the time, but at that moment it really became central.”

“And despite their brevity, the Ländler contain some of Schubert’s most expressive and ingenious music, with its ambiguous harmonies and playful back-and-forth between between major and minor. Many of them, particularly the 12 German Dances, D. 790, inspired Brahms, Mahler, and Schumann, whose “Carnaval,” suggests Aimard, would not otherwise have existed. 

“So which Ländler should listeners head for first?

“It’s very hard to be selective,” laughs Aimard. “What I love is to travel, to wander from song to song, from reverie to reverie, to let this music take me by the hand and lead me off.”

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