The pianist Lars Vogt died in September last year. His cancer had been diagnosed in 2021, and he was already ill when, against doctors’ advice, he had travelled to Bremen to begin these Schubert recordings with his longtime collaborators, the violinist Christian Tetzlaff and his cellist sister Tanja. They began with the death-haunted E flat Trio, D929, with its funeral-march second movement, and recorded the B flat Trio, D898 four months later. In the sleeve notes to the set, the Tetzlaffs discuss the background to the sessions, paying touching tribute to their friend and his music making: “I find that in the recording,” says Tanja, “one notices that deep inside he already knew that in all likelihood he wasn’t going to be able to live very much longer.”
