<<  -- 2 --  David Wilkins    CREATIVE BEAUTY

It would be very easy to look at titles like 'Volumes 34 & 35' and think first of the prospect of the lower scrapings of an increasingly dubious barrel. But that isn't how this edition works and, anyway, there are a lot of us who might be very willing to trade less than first-rate Schubert for the best of the 'also-ran'!

Volume 34 deals with the years 1817 to 1821. There are no greatly familiar songs here such as would be found on the average Schubert's Greatest Hits album -- but there are plenty that deserve to be much better known to a wider audience. One, amongst many, of the great joys of this series is that you can settle down to listen to the entire disc, treat it as a something akin to an armchair equivalent of a Schubert 'Abend' and, simply, take pleasure in the passing pleasures of the significant songs that you will want to return to over and again and the less involving, but always satisfying, diversions of a soul that seemed to have no choice other than to leak melody.

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