Badura-Skoda plays Schubert – Schulhof – Strauss Jr.

Tänze aus Wien

For his latest album release Paul Badura-Skoda draws from the abundant pool of dances and waltzes by Franz Schubert. The course of the Schubertiades – small, unannounced concerts in the circle of Schuberts Friends – often involved cheerful dancing for which Schubert, who improvised at the piano, provided the music. He played his finest musical thoughts repeatedly so as to remember them and write them down later on. Accordingly, there is an incredible wealth of melodic and harmonious invention behind the apparently ever so simple waltzes and dances by Schubert, paired with a rich range of emotional contents: from radiant joy to the deepest sorrow and melancholy. The polka adaptions of Otto Schulhof using motifs by Johann Strau? II are likewise not composed for the public stage but primarily for smaller circles.

Paul Badura-Skoda

His teacher was Edwin Fischer; his discoverer Wilhelm Furtw?ngler. His composer friend, Frank Martin, composed a piano concerto for him and he shared a long professional friendship with the great Russian violinist David Oistrach.

Paul Badura-Skoda has long been a symbol of the cultivation of Viennese classical music. The holder of the prestigious B?sendorfer-Ring, he is a celebrated guest at major international music festivals. Earlier in his life Badura-Skoda collaborated with such renowned conductors as Hans Knappertsbusch, Herbert von Karajan, Georges Szell and Karl B?hm. He has also worked with Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Georg Solti and John Eliot Gardiner, to name but a few. His recordings number well beyond the two hundred mark (LP’s and CD’s) including the complete cycles of the piano sonatas of Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven. He recorded these cycles on original instruments from his own collection.

Badura-Skoda performs with equal authority on both period and modern instruments. He was, truly, a pioneer in proposing the use of period pianos in performance, which has, today, become very popular in concert halls around the world. His profound knowledge of instruments from Bach’s and Mozart’s style up to the present has given him the capacity to extract from the modern instruments a quality of sound which never fails to surprise audiences and critics alike. Badura-Skoda is not only known as a Mozart specialist; a Viennese by birth he has a genuine understanding of Schubert and never ceases to be in love with his music. He is also a great admirer of Johann Sebastian Bach and the author of a book entitled Interpreting Bach on the Keyboard (Oxford University Press). Badura-Skoda is also active as a conductor and composer.