Aimi Kobayashi - Schubert: Sonata in C Minor, D. 958, 4 Impromptus, D. 935 & Rondo, D. 951 (2024) [Hi-Res]

Aimi Kobayashi, who rose to prominence as a prizewinner at the 2021 International Chopin Piano Competition, has been praised by Gramophone as a pianist who can “rivet the attention through fine-drawn line and hushed dynamics as much as through vivid gesture and brute force”.

She now follows Warner Classics albums of Chopin and Liszt with a Schubert recital: the four Impromptus D935, the Sonata in C minor D958 and the Rondo in A major D951, a substantial piece for two players at one piano.

Joining her for the duet is Kyohei Sorita, a fellow laureate of the Chopin competition – and also her husband.

“Schubert's music has a special beauty that is unique to him,” she says. “The pieces I recorded for the album were written towards the end of his life, when he was 30 or 31 years old. I will turn 30 in 2025 ... I thought it would be meaningful for me to play them at the same age that this composer of genius wrote them ...Schubert’s works are lonely, but full of tenderness … It is as if the composer is conscious of death, but in the midst of it, he discovers a little happiness and expresses it in his music.”