Alpha has been issuing Eric Le Sage's Schumann recordings in double-disc sets with lavishly illustrated sleeves featuring 19th-century French paintings. Discussion of the art occupies almost as much space in the accompanying notes as the music that Le Sage plays. It's curious packaging - after all, Schumann was not an especially visual composer, and his links to other artists were more with early romantic literary figures such as ETA Hoffmann - but it certainly makes each set visually more enticing. Le Sage's performances, though, have less to recommend them. While in his previous collection of Schumann's chamber music with piano he showed himself to be an attentive collaborator, his solo piano playing never really suggests that he has strong enough views on Schumann to justify a whole series of discs. In the Humoresque, the F sharp minor Sonata and the Etudes Symphoniques, his playing is perfectly correct and musical, but ultimately just tepid; if the Bunte Blätter Op 99 fares better, it's because the 14 pieces are less memorable musically and expressively far less ambitious.
Source: guardian.co.uk
