Following on from the sensation which Sebastian Knauer caused last year as a performer of Mozart (Wolfram Goertz in the newspaper Die Zeit enthused: “One of the most beautiful Mozart recordings of all time”), he has now returned to Franz Schubert. Indeed, his first CD recording of the late piano works marked him out as a sensitive authority on Schubert’s compositional style: “... Knauer is a contemplative pianist with a profound sense of touch which allows him to explore the strength of expression in Schubert’s works at just the right moments ...” (Carsten Dürer in Piano News).

With his new CD, Sebastian Knauer comes at the composer from a surprising angle. As in the case of the Impromptus D899 on his previous Schubert CD, Knauer combines the illusion of improvisation with a sense of the overall work. His clear and powerful, but never triumphant style of playing seems to find just the right nuance for each moment.