Schubert: Greatest Hits

The problem is the same when someone wants to get to know the work of any classical composer: which pieces to start with, performed by whom and in what selection. It is no different when the composer is Schubert – perhaps even more difficult simply because of the quantity of small pieces: 600 Lieder alone.

The list below is a selection of Schubert's works that is intended to help a person unfamiliar with them to get started. It is not comprehensive: much excellent and beautiful music is not on the list. This is a list of single works, not CD albums. The classical music business likes to keep the commercial pot boiling by issuing selection after selection in various flavours of performers, making it impossible here to recommend one album over the other.

The list only reproduces opus numbers or key signatures when they are indelibly part of the title of the piece. Since Otto E. Deutsch compiled his epic catalogue of Schubert's works and gave each piece a 'D' number, opus numbers are a fussy irrelevance for most listeners, as are key signatures. This type of meaningless fusspottery is the unacceptable face of classical music.

Lieder

Performers: Fischer-Dieskau rarely puts a foot wrong. Some of the songs make more sense sung by women: your choice. Very, very few non-native speakers are convincing Lied-singers. Of German male singers, Hans Hotter had a fine bass with good enunciation, Thomas Quasthoff is too slow and lingering for my taste. Matthias Goerne is even slower.

Lieder from song cycles

Some purists will recoil at our disembowelling of the song cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise in this list. It seems unreasonable, though, to expect someone who is toe-dipping to set aside the hour or so needed for each of the full cycles. If the toe-dip is pleasurable they will do the full cycle at some point anyway.

Instrumental

Apart from the Trout Quintet and the Wanderer Fantasy, the list contains works from Schubert's last two years. No symphonies? No symphonies. This list is intended as a toe-dipper and therefore has to be short. It is not in the least bit representative. Every Schubert fan would make a different list.

If this list is too long for you start with the Impromptus D 899 and D 935 in that order. Both develop their magic over several listenings.

Performers: In the piano works Brendel delivers consistently high quality. Stephen Kovacevich produced a spectacularly good interpretation of D 960. Mstislav Rostropovich and the Melos Quartet set the bar high for D 956. There is an ancient performance of D 934 by Serkin and Busch – with terrible sound quality – which is waiting for its spiritual equal.