Schubert - Sonatas & Impromptus review | Andrew Clements's classical album of the week

The Guardian 100

András Schiff (ECM)
A 19th-century Viennese fortepiano shows off its special tonal qualities in this magnificent detailed and expressive double disc set

In 2010, András Schiff acquired a fortepiano made in Vienna in about 1820 by Franz Brodmann. It had once belonged to the last Austro-Hungarian emperor, Karl I, and had been very carefully renovated in the 1960s. Schiff subsequently placed the instrument on loan in the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, but not before using it for a series of recordings and recitals.