Discoveries of 2021 (1): The maestro’s sister
Daily Comfort ZoneTrudelies Leonhardt, sister of the late early-music pioneer Gustav Leonhardt, has a modest practice playing original period keyboards, unnoticed by the music business.
I find her Schubert irresistible.
Trude turned 90 this year.
This is fabulous playing…. and a beautiful period sound. This is how this beautiful piece will have sounded at the time.
Irresistible indeed! I’d never heard her (or of her); thank you for this post, NL.
Old Europe, at its best.
Exceptional, natural music making. She is listening to Schubert. Is there more of her true gift available anywhere.
There’s another Schubert Sonata, equally beautiful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFDUX7F1CZg
She is a fabulous player. I never heard Schubert piano music that natural and expressive.
Leonhardt was the only maestro in the “period” instrument trend I could respect fully. He was a real musician, not a phony like the others.
He even played in a movie about JS Bach, figuring as the great man, an utterly strict, humorless, dull, stiff, intellectual, distant, inhuman personage only interested in pure, rational musical construction. Somehow that movie got it very wrong.
This was a wonderful surprise for me. I now understand the reason that certain pieces should be played on period instruments. What a gifted player! Has she made any commercial recordings?