Süss solo: Franz Schubert

After many years of preparation Margit-Anna Süss has recorded on her own instrument the eight Impromptus written by Schubert in the final year of his life, and this world première provides a potential enrichment of the repertoire that, however, demands the highest degree of technical expertise and musical mastery – all the more because this fine harpist has not made “arrangements” of these eight perfect examples of early romantic piano music but has performed them on her harp straight from their original versions.

As a work of art this succeeds because Margit-Anna Süss is using a technique of momentarily damping the individual strings, without which their continued vibrations would flow into each other like the colours in an Emil Nolde painting but without achieving comparable aesthetic effects in tonal music. Thanks to her special method the results are most convincing: clear, transparent voice-leading and distinct articulation produce in the silvery sound of the plucked instrument a timbre that is not far removed from that of many early pianos, and furthermore, for instance in the A flat major Impromptu op. 90 no. 4, discreetly carries the usual concept of “arpeggio” back to its literal origin.