Arcadi Volodos Releases New Album with Schubert and Schumann Pieces
The pianist’s first album in seven years will be released this spring, with the first single available now.
Pianist Arcadi Volodos will release a new album on Sony Classical on May 1. Recorded live at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the album features Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata No. 17 in D Major, D.850 alongside Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen, Op. 15.
The first single from the album, Schumann’s Kinderszenen, Op.15/VII. Träumerei, has been released ahead of the album’s full release. The recording marks Volodos’s first album in seven years.
“The great difficulty with Schubert,” Volodos said, “is the basic outline, the absolute transparency. It is in silence that the personality and the spirituality of the interpreter shine through.”
Volodos has previously recorded several major Schubert sonatas, including the G major Sonata D 894 and the A major Sonata D 959. His new album focuses on the D major Sonata D 850, sometimes referred to as the “Gastein” Sonata, composed in 1825 while Schubert was staying in Bad Gastein.
Volodos notes that Schubert’s music requires interpretive flexibility rather than strict adherence to fixed tempos. “It is absurd to want to fix the tempo by means of a metronome,” he said. “Music is a language, not an equation.”
The album also includes Schumann’s Kinderszenen, a cycle of thirteen piano miniatures best known for the piece “Träumerei.”
“I think that it is only when you grow older that you understand these pieces better and better,” Volodos said. “It is a question of rediscovering within oneself the child's sense of wonderment, this pure and sincere understanding of a world that one spends an entire lifetime trying to rediscover.”
Born in St. Petersburg, Volodos first gained recognition for his virtuosic piano arrangements of Romantic orchestral works. Since his international breakthrough in the late 1990s, he has performed at major concert halls and festivals worldwide and has received numerous international awards for his recordings.
Album Information
Arcadi Volodos
Schubert: Piano Sonata No. 17 in D Major, D.850
Schumann: Kinderszenen, Op. 15
Label: Sony Classical
Release Date: May 1, 2026
Recorded live at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris
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