Yesterday evening, before the bad weather arrived, I walked down to Carnegie Hall to hear the great pianist András Schiff perform a program that consisted entirely of works by Schubert, the tragic genius who was perhaps an even greater composer for the piano than Beethoven himself.
The recital began with the Piano Sonata in A minor, D. 845 (1825). The work is considered the composer's first "mature" sonata and the first of three to be published during his lifetime. (He is credited with 21 in all, though several were never completed and exist only in fragmentary form.) Evidence of Schubert's increasing confidence in his abilities can be found in the dedication to Archduke Rudolf, Beethoven's most important patron, and in the title given the published edition of Premiere Grande Sonate. It's also apparent in the boldness of the first movement where Schubert combines development and recapitulation to the extent that one is not sure where the one leaves off and the other begins. Schubert himself was particularly proud of the second movement whose theme and variations are among the best he wrote. The movement is in C major but often drifts into a minor key as though thoughts of mortality were never far from Schubert's mind. An Irish pianist named Fiachra Garvey has in fact noted a connection between this sonata and a lied composed at roughly the same time:
"Schubert’s D842 “Totengabers Heimwehe” (Gravediggers Longing) shares thematic material with the D845 sonata. The initial unison theme at the beginning of the sonata is used in the song accompanied by the words 'Abandoned by all, cousin only to death, I wait at the brink, starring longingly into the grave'."
The sonata was followed by a series of shorter works - the Four Impromptus, D. 935 (1827). This is the second of two sets that Schubert composed and, unlike the the first set D. 899, was published posthumously. Although many musicologists and critics, including Schumann, have seen these pieces as part of a whole, a "sonata in disguise," this misses the point. Schubert was here trying to break away from Classical modes to better accommodate his Romantic tendencies. The point of the Impromptus is precisely that they were not a sonata but a new type of musical form that sought to capture a fleeting emotional content that could not easily be expressed in the traditional multi-movement sonata. In that sense, the Impromptus - for whose initial conception Schubert may have been indebted to his friend the Czech composer Jan Václav Voříšek - look forward to the works of Chopin and Liszt. Schubert's works are invariably compared - usually to his detriment - to those of Beethoven; but in actuality, had he lived longer, Schubert might have become one of music's great innovators and taken his listeners in an entirely new direction from that of his Classical predecessors. These late piano pieces are an indication of what might have been.
The Impromptus were followed by the Klavierstücke, D. 946 (1828). These three short pieces are a continuation of the shorter musical forms Schubert had explored the year before in the Impromptus and can perhaps best be seen as a further development of his desire to express his ideas in a more concentrated and more lyrical manner. It's worth noting that it was Brahms who edited these pieces prior to their publication in 1868. Some twenty-five years later, at the end of his career, Brahms published his own Klavierstücke, Op. 118, and one wonders if Schubert's pieces had any influence, if only in their concept, on the composition of Brahms's own six short works for piano.
After intermission, the program concluded with the Piano Sonata in G major, D. 894 (1826). This was the last of the three sonatas to be published during the composer's lifetime, albeit as four separate pieces, the first of which was titled Fantasie, rather than as a whole. Among Schubert's late works, the sonata stands out for its serene mood. At the time it was written, Schubert had less than two years of life; nevertheless, he doesn't allow intimations of his mortality to intrude but instead keeps them firmly in check and one has the impression he is deliberately trying to keep them out of his thoughts. Instead, the work has the reflective autumnal quality a much older composer might assume when looking back over what he has accomplished. Perhaps for this reason, the piece is one of Schubert's most popular and it may have been this quality that led Schumann to famously term it "most perfect in form and conception" of all the sonatas. Certainly, it was a good choice with which to end this program. We last glimpse Schubert at peace and, rather than raging against his fate as Beethoven had, quietly accepting the end he knew could not be far off. This is the way one would like best to remember this gentle sad man whose life was cut short before those about him could fully comprehend his genius.
Though known more for his performances of Bach, András Schiff is one of the foremost interpreters of Schubert's work. I attended last season a recital in which the pianist performed the final sonatas of the four great Classical composers, and found his rendition of Schubert's Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960 the highlight of the evening. At yesterday evening's extremely long recital, he kept the audience's attention riveted on the nearly empty stage where he sat quietly at the piano and played through the works without any great fanfare or ostentation. Surprisingly, the recital was not sold out. Almost the entire rear balcony was empty. The audience who did attend, however, were extremely enthusiastic and appreciative.
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