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Franz Schubert (17971828)

Piano Sonatas 181525: Sketches, Fragments and Unfinished Works

This recording spans a wide period of Franz Schubert's piano sonata composition. It starts with his very first
sonata, continues with three fragments of sonatas remaining from his middle period, and ends with his last
sonata fragment, an outstanding and progressive work, bold in conception.

Schubert's earliest piano sonatas are distinguished by a lively joy in experiment. A number of works have been
handed down to us in varying and partly fragmentary versions and have survived only as single movements.
Since almost nothing is known to us of the occasion of their composition and of contemporary performances, it
is worth taking a short look at the circumstances of Schubert's life in the years from 1815 to 1817. When in
February 1815 the seventeen-year-old Schubert composed his first sonata, he was working as an assistant
teacher to his father at the latter's school in Vienna and lived in 'a cramped room in which he had put a
wretched piano' (according to the reminiscences of his friend, the poet Johann Mayrhofer). Antonio Salieri gave
him free lessons in composition. These were, as contemporary sources tell us, directed towards vocal writing,
where independent instrumental music played no part. Schubert was evidently proud to be Salieri's pupil: this
is shown in his inclusion of the words 'Pupil of Herr von Salieri' at the bottom of several of his compositions.

Schubert's first sonata, the Sonata in E major, D. 157, includes three completed movements, of which the
last, a Menuetto with Trio, is in B major. Although one may concede that the Menuetto brings the work to an
effective conclusion, the Sonata must be regarded as incomplete since a final movement in the basic
key of E major has not been handed down. Schubert occupied himself intensively in the composition of this
work, as several revisions show. The first movement is conceived on the model of a string quartet and is
marked by exchanges between solo voices and timbres. The slow middle movement in E minor is of astonishing
musical profundity and maturity. In it Schubert contrasts with the introverted principal theme, a warmer, lyrical
theme in G major, and a rhythmically pregnant and vigorous central section in C major. Outstanding here is
Schubert's mastery, creating wide arches and grand melodic lines without thereby expanding the form or
affecting the balance. The concluding Menuetto is a very fast movement, marked, unusually for this form,
Allegro vivace, and sparkles with energy and joie de vivre.

In April 1816 Schubert applied in vain for the position of a music teacher in Laibach (Ljubljana). In the same
month he sent one of his song albums to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, including the settings of
Goethe's Heidenrslein, D. 257, Wandrers Nachtlied, D. 224 and Erlknig, D. 328. This was returned
to him without comment.

In autumn of that year, Schubert settled in the inner city of Vienna and found for his new home an
obviously much better piano. Encouraged by this he wrote, up to August 1817, six sonatas (D. 537, D.
557, D. 566, D. 567, D. 571 and D. 575). Conceivably Schubert envisaged them as classical sonatas in the
tradition of Haydn, Clementi or Mozart, although this tradition was then already past. Often in these works a
strong affinity with the dance is perceptible. More than half of all the movements are in triple time. The
penultimate of the series, the Sonata in F sharp minor, D. 571, remains as a fragment. Here Schubert's
great model, Ludwig van Beethoven, is constantly present. This is noticeable particularly in the first movement
and the finale, which show strong similarities with the Moonlight Sonata. The existing 141 bars of the first
movement transport the listener into a remote, melancholy world in which there are few elements of contrast
and drama. This is due first and foremost to the fact that Schubert constructed it on monothematic principles.
The main theme has a particular lyricism about it, yet this is not enough for the construction of dialectical
tension in the context of a sonata first movement. The movement breaks off directly before the expected
recapitulation. In spite of all resemblances to Beethoven, Schubert does not succeed in taking on the latter's
formal scheme in his Sonata quasi una fantasia, or in finding his own formal solution. Did the sonata remain
incomplete because of the overwhelming example of Beethoven?

Three of the four movements of this sonata were originally handed down and published separately but,
following paper analysis of the original pages and the choice of keys, it now seems certain that they must form
a four-movement sonata. To provide a better connection of movements I continue in this recording, directly
after the break in the first movement, with the Scherzo in D major, D. 570, followed by the Andante in A
major, D. 604. These two movements Schubert wrote out in full. The Allegro in F sharp minor, D. 570, breaks
off, exactly like the first movement, before the recapitulation, and is clearly, in view of the character of the
finale, to be put at the end of this sonata.

In Schubert's next attempts at sonatas there can be recognised in the two very short fragments in C sharp
minor, D. 655, and E minor, D. 769a (previously D. 994) from the years 1819 and 1823 the struggle to
create themes and structures of greater sharpness and developmental possibilities. Why these works were
broken off at a very early stage cannot be explained. With the work in C sharp minor, which has no tempo
direction, there is a unified sonata exposition with two contrasting themes. Schubert here makes use of the
very unusual keys of C sharp minor and G sharp major in a search for new expressive possibilities. His work
breaks off, however, after 73 bars, with a double bar and repeat sign, and no further indication of the
continuation of this composition is left.

The fragment in E minor can also be designated as a simple sketch for a sonata-allegro movement. In only 38
bars Schubert notated a sparsely accompanied theme based on an E minor triad, as at the beginning of an
exposition. In contrast with earlier sonatas he succeeds here, in the smallest space, in creating dramatic
contrast and giving the theme a clear contour. The short fragment was first published in 1958.

The last and arguably the greatest work in this recording, the Sonata in C major, D. 840, marks a new
start after a two-year pause in Schubert's sonata writing. In spring 1825 this sonata stood at the beginning of a
new creative stage, comprising three sonatas (in C major, D. 840, A minor, D. 845 and D major, D. 850, the
'Gastein Sonata' ) written within a few months. Already at the end of March 1824 Schubert had told his friend
Kupelwieser in an often quoted letter that he would, through string quartets and other chamber music, 'pave
the way for great symphonies', a path on which he without doubt had already found himself since the
composition in 1822 of the Unfinished Symphony (Symphony in B minor, D. 759). The four-movement Sonata
in C major known as 'Reliquie' is a great step on this path, even if it remains unfinished only the first and
second movements are complete. The piano-writing is laid out very orchestrally, and the individual sections
and formal structures take on hitherto unknown symphonic dimensions. Careful listening reveals premonitions
of the Great C major Symphony, D. 944. Particularly in the first movement, Moderato, Schubert embarks on a
new range of sound in which the piano takes over directly the colours and nuances of the orchestra. The special
pianistic challenge of this movement lies in the handling of its immense structure and the necessity of
transferring individual instrumental sonorities to the piano. The epic breadth and the many daring harmonic
elements of this movement reach far beyond the music of the period, recalling the 'sound cathedral' of a
Bruckner symphony.

The second movement, Andante, in C minor, is more formally manageable than the first and is generally
written strictly in four-part harmony. It has the character of a ballade. Its general development culminates in
an extended coda that provides, as it were, a conclusion to both movements. Conceivably Schubert might have
been unwilling or unable to complete the work after its two remarkable first movements, as with the Unfinished
Symphony. He continued, however, according to the traditional formal principles of a four-movement sonata.
The Menuetto in A flat major that follows (with a completed Trio in G sharp minor) breaks off exactly like the C
major Finale at a point crucial for the development. In the Menuetto, Schubert avoids the inelegant modulation
from A major back to the repeat of the theme in A flat major. In the Finale, a very comprehensive development
would have been necessary, since in the exposition of this movement no fewer than three different themes are
presented, which would have had to be worked out. The number of themes and the ambitious proportions of
this final movement - of which the first part comprises 238 bars - does not make it clear whether this was
intended as a Rondo, as marked, or a sonata-allegro movement.

Only a few years after Schubert's death Robert Schumann began to work enthusiastically for the promotion of
Schubert's music. In 1839 the then still complete autograph manuscript of the Sonata in C major came into
Schuman's possession, given to him by Schubert's brother Ferdinand during a stay in Vienna. Schumann
succeeded in March of the same year in arranging for the first performance of the Great C major Symphony, D.
944, in Leipzig. Shortly afterwards he published the second movement of the unfinished sonata in the periodical
he had co-founded, the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik. After Schumann's death the manuscript served as the source
of the first edition, published in Leipzig in 1861. The editor designated the work wrongly as 'Reliquie. Letze
Sonate (unvollendet) fr das Pianoforte von Franz Schubert' ('Relic. Last Sonata (unfinished) for the Pianoforte
by Franz Schubert'), which could explain how the sonata came by its nickname.

That most sonatas in this recording were left unfinished by the composer must not be a cause of irritation. On
the contrary, the fragments make it possible for us to approach Schubert directly on an emotional level,
revealing a completely new view of him and his works. Josef von Spaun, one of Schubert's most loyal friends,
once described this as follows: 'Those who knew Schubert closely know how deeply his composing affected him
and how his work was born in pain. Whoever saw him only once in the morning while he was composing,
glowing and with shining eyes, in other words like a sleep-walker, will not forget the impression.' These
fragmentary works very often breathe a special mysterious poetry. They provide a fuller view of Schubert's
creative process and musical thinking and at the same time bring to life for us his journey and quest.

Gottlieb Wallisch
English version by Keith Anderson

Sonate 2, 3, 6
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Piano Sonatas Nos. 2, 3 and 6

In 1815 Franz Schubert committed his first piano sonatas to paper, starting a lifelong relationship with the
form. A young seventeen-year-old composer set out to conquer the weighty heritage of the Viennese classics
and to find his own musical language. Schubert appears here for the first time as a wanderer between worlds:
the conscious struggle for his own musical legitimacy and his future intermediary rle between the classical and
the romantic, perhaps still unconsciously, as far as he was concerned, is now seen and heard. Surprisingly
Schubert had already completed some string quartets and two symphonies, and had been able therefore to
acquire experience in the so-called larger forms. The next due step in his development as a composer was to
the piano sonata.

The particular charm in these early sonatas is often of an elusive character that reveals to the listener the
composers uncertainty as to how these experiments will end. Many of these early attempts by Schubert
remained as fragments or survived incomplete. Happily this is not the case with the sonatas from 1815 to 1817
here included. Only the final movement, D. 346, which is shown by analysis of the paper to belong to the 1815
Sonata in C major, D. 279, breaks off abruptly after 231 bars. The remaining movements are complete and
in order. In the case of the Sonata in E major, D. 459, of 1816 we meet the very interesting rather unusual
problem of five-movement form. The hitherto usual title of Fnf Klavierstcke (Five Piano Pieces) certainly does
not come from Schubert himself but was added posthumously by the publisher, probably to increase the
chances of sales. Since we now do not have the complete autograph of this sonata but only copies, the
conception of the work must be subject to speculation. Certainly it was possible for a great musical spirit like
Schubert, who was always searching for new and apt solutions to sonata problems, to take the step of
extending the then usual four-movement form to one of five movements, especially since he was later to do
this again, for example in the Trout Quintet, D. 667. That the movement standing second represents no
scherzo, following its title, but rather is written in the conventional sonata-form is beyond question; whether
the added title Scherzo came from Schubert himself is uncertain. A real scherzo is found in the fourth
movement of this sonata. While the first four movements are rounded and self-contained, the finale has the
direction, exceptionally rare for Schubert, of Allegro patetico, presenting a puzzle to the performer. The often
lightly scored, very rugged piano movement hardly offers a mood of suffering and pathos. There is a lack of
strong drama and only towards the end of the movement does Schubert come, in the coda, to an urgent onrush
of sound. Generally in both D. 279 and D. 459 the piano-writing is unwieldy and unpianistic in character - it was
Schuberts intention to translate absolute music directly onto the piano, music that largely recalls a string
quartet or orchestral movement. More than in later years Schubert thinks in these early works in a completely
unpianistic way. Many sequences of hand movements, awkward leaps and almost unnatural octave passages
betray the still rather inexperienced pianist, in no way a great virtuoso. The piano must here be understood
partly as a fortuitous available means of expression for Schuberts inspirations and ideas.

These ideas, as for example in the first movement of the Sonata, D. 279, with its ambitious intentions, often
give rise to the writing of a large-scale, powerful symphony for the piano in the style of Beethoven. A solid
thematic basis, coupled with a readiness to think in orchestral colours, is found here, though still with one or
two uneven modulations or changes that are rather too deliberate. Already the first movement of D. 459 is
further developed, more rounded, intimate, already an example of Schuberts developing lyricism. The form is
reduced and economically employed, and Schubert comes openly to the heart of his musical statement.

The slow middle movements of both sonatas plunge into quite a different world. In them from the beginning a
wonderful feeling of relaxation and rest dominate, an enigmatic early maturity in expression and a remarkable
flair for timing and for the organic build-up and relaxation of tension. Schuberts whole youthful
lightheartedness here comes prominently into play. The briskly moving Menuetto in D. 279, like the Scherzo
and Trio in D. 459, in which they follow the usual conventions of form, in strict academic style, can, however,
for a brief moment contradict this impression in the very charming and elegant trio sections.

The most artistically developed example included here is, finally, the Sonata in E minor, D. 566/506, written in
1817. Here too the source is not clear. Once there existed a complete three-movement autograph, of which the
first and third movements, thanks to a careful copy, are preserved. The work was printed posthumously,
however, in single movements in various places and at different times. The completion in four movements with
the contemporaneous Rondo in E major, D. 506, can be justified through various circumstances, and is the
reason for the inclusion of the work here. The first movement of the sonata has great thematic weight and
depth of expression, the dynamic directions are more differentiated and numerous than earlier, and also the
technical demands on the player are more pianistic and refined. In the second movement (Allegretto), a
marvellously tender song without words, and in the fourth movement, D. 506, (the apt direction moto coming
from the first edition) Schubert ventures into the realm of pianistic virtuosity affording the pianist opportunities
for sheer joy in the performance. The music gains extraordinarily thereby in radiance and liveliness, and is
playful and relaxed. In the Scherzo too one finds this new generosity and control; the distant tonality of A flat
major of this movement in an E major/E minor work is yet a further example of the young Schuberts joy in
experiment.

Gottlieb Wallisch
English version by Keith Anderson

5, 7, 11, 12

Franz SCHUBERT (1797-1828)

Piano Sonatas (Fragments)

Tragedy and failure is suggested by the idea of fragment in music and particularly in the case of
Schubert. In addition to popular works, such as the Symphony in B minor, D.759, Unfinished, the
uncompleted stage oratorio Lazarus, D.689, or the String Quartet in C minor, D.703, there are a
large number of fragmentary piano sonatas. Most of these, of which four are here included, come
from the period between 1817 and 1823, Schuberts so-called years of crisis. Much of what
Schubert tackled at this time may be reckoned among his most daring and strange works and
remained fragmentary, serving, as it were, as experiments in composition. Schubert wanted to
prepare the way, through the intermediate stages of string quartet and piano sonatas, for the grand
symphony. These sonata fragments, therefore, take on a particular value in Schuberts creative life,
not least because of their relatively high number, with twelve unfinished sonatas against eleven
completed now surviving. They document the composers struggle over the formal pattern of an
already strongly traditional form, the sonata. Often models, Haydn, Mozart, Hummel, Carl Maria
von Weber and above all Beethoven, are clearly perceptible in these works, yet at the same time
Schuberts personal style is already strongly marked. The use of keys with a higher number of
sharps or flats (D flat major, D.567; B major, D.575; A flat major, D.557), which indicate a strongly
emotional expressive content, is an essential characteristic of the sonatas from this period.
Generally two types of fragment may be distinguished, fragments of sonata expositions on the one
hand, which break off in the development or, at the latest, with the start of the recapitulation, and on
the other hand cycle fragments where independent movements were not completed. The piano
sonata fragments allow a profound examination of Schuberts inner compositional procedures, yet
do not answer the ever present question as to why Schubert broke off at this or that point in the
work and did not take it up again. Is it the feeling that the thematic material is pushed to its limits or
that the demands of the form could not be correctly met, or is it simply the inner pressure to change
to a new, supposedly more exciting or more rewarding task? A definitive answer is not always
possible through thorough analysis. In the end, therefore, the music itself must speak, music that in
these cases always brings with it a touch of the puzzle and mystery.

Leading pianists and Schubert scholars have attempted to complete the surviving fragments. For the
present recording, however, it was decided to remain true exclusively to Schuberts original text and
to work without the completions of others, thus to underline also the fragmentary impression of
these pieces. In two places, however, movements are completed through analogy with parallel
passages. In the Sonata in D flat major, D.567, for the last missing page of the finale it was possible
to draw from the later E flat major version of this work; in the Sonata in F minor, D.625/505, the
missing harmonisation in the finale (bars 201 to 270) was completed by analogy with the similar
passage at the beginning of the movement.
With the Sonata in A flat major, D.557, composed in May 1817, we find a probable cycle fragment
by Schubert. In spite of the completeness of all three surviving movements, this work presents a
puzzle in regard to the grouping of keys. The first movement in A flat major and the second in the
dominant key of E flat major follow the conventional sonata structure, but the third movement is
again in E flat major. Since this movement has the evident character of a finale, the question arises
as to whether Schubert intended to finish the work in E flat and not in A flat, or whether a fourth
movement is missing or has been lost. This question has not been definitely answered by modern
research so that the sonata is still reckoned among sonata fragments. The simple piano writing of
this sonata often recalls Haydn and Mozart and the E flat minor central section of the second
movement suggests the example of Johann Sebastian Bach in its rhythmic strictness. The opening
theme of the third movement presents an interesting parallel to the last movement of the Sonata in A
major, D.664, written two years later. In this short work Schubert shows altogether his cheerful,
happy, yet very classically influenced side.

With the Sonata in D flat major, D.567, written in June 1817, Schubert engaged with particular
intensity. It similarly survives as a cycle fragment, lacking the last page of the third movement of
the autograph manuscript. Schuberts friend Anselm Httenbrenner writes in his memoirs of this
sonata: it was written with such difficulty that he [Schubert] could not play it without
encouragement. He sent it to a foreign publisher; but he had it back with the indication that
they would not risk publishing such a terribly difficult composition . This objection induced
Schubert a year later to transpose the work into the easier key of E flat major and extend it by the
addition of a third movement Minuet and Trio. In this four-movement form it was published in
Vienna in 1829 as Op.122 (D.568). The original version in D flat major is counted among the most
ambitious and tricky of Schuberts sonatas. The C sharp minor middle movement points in its
strictness to the expressive world of Beethoven, while in the outer movements extended lyrical
themes of romantic almost Biedermeier serenity predominate.

Beethovens mighty shadow is evident most clearly of all in the Sonata in C major, D.613/612, and
the Sonata in F minor, D.625/505, of 1818. The association with this great model occurs in these
works with the short quotation in the former in bars 13 to 19 of the first movement of the Waldstein
Sonata and in the latter in the texture and technique suggesting the first movement of the
Appassionata, with the strict adoption of the key scheme. As in the Appassionata Schubert follows
the key progression F minor to D flat major (the slow movement) and F minor and adds (eventually,
in place of the Adagio) a Scherzo in E major.

The Sonata in C major, D.613, is a cycle fragment. The work consists of two unfinished
movements, of which the second, without tempo indication, is of particular interest. It must here be
a planned final movement, which suggests, with its lilting 6/8 metre an Allegretto tempo. The
clearly virtuoso and pianistically effectively conceived piano writing here feels very strongly
influenced by Carl Maria von Weber. On the basis of research into the paper and the manuscript it
seems that this fragment comes from the same time as the Adagio in E major, D.612, considered as
a slow movement, which is harmonically and thematically directly related with the principal
movement.
Franz Schubert worked on his Sonata in F minor, D.625/505, in September 1818 in Zseliz
(Hungary), where he spent the summer months of 1818 and 1824 as music teacher to the daughters
of Count Esterhzy. In particular the first movement of this sonata shows, with the influence of
Beethoven, Schuberts attempts to find a new path. In the exposition he no longer contrasts two
themes, but derives one from the other, thus the greatest part of the exposition turns into a kind of
development with breathtaking modulations and the unrelentingly recurrent trill motif (almost an
anticipation of the demonic use of the trill in Schuberts last Sonata in B flat major, D.960). The
movement breaks off at the beginning of the recapitulation. The Scherzo in E major, and the Adagio
in D flat major published earlier in a separate form as D.505 and in the light of modern research
regarded as belonging to the Sonata in F minor, are both complete. The dramatic and, for Schubert,
unusually virtuoso final movement brings two strongly contrasted themes together. This goes
astonishingly far beyond the style of its time and places this movement in affinity with a work of
Chopin or Liszt.

Gottlieb Wallisch

English version by Keith Anderson

Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)

Sonata in A Major, Op. 120, D. 664


Sonata in A Minor, Op. 164, D. 537
Fantasia in C Major, Op. 15, D. 760 (Wanderer Fantasia)

Franz Schubert was born in Vienna in 1797, the son of a schoolmaster, whose path it seemed he might follow
as an assistant teacher. His father had come to Vienna from his native Moravia to join his brother in the
business, and reasons of domestic economy dictated that the sons of the family should follow the same calling.
At home Schubert had some lessons in music from his father and from an older brother, followed by sound
musical training and general education from the age of nine as a chorister of the imperial court chapel, a
position that admitted him as a pupil of the Imperial and Royal Stadtkonvikt. His teachers here finally included
Antonio Salieri and he profited from the particular friendship of a university student, Josef von Spaun, who had
established a student orchestra that Schubert led and occasionally directed. Holidays from school allowed
music-making in Schubert's own family and he played the viola in the family quartet, in which his father played
the cello and two of his brothers first and second violin. By the age of thirteen Schubert was already writing
music, including string quartets for performance at home and his first songs. His voice broke in 1812, but he
remained a pupil of the Stadtkonvikt for another year, eventually rejecting an offered scholarship and further
general education in favour of a career that allowed him more time for music. The needs of his family, however,
made this dedication to composition immediately impossible, and in 1814 he embarked on a course as a
primary school teacher. The following year he joined his father, although he showed no great aptitude for his
new profession, which he was to practise intermittently, as need arose, for a year or so. The greater part of the
remaining years of his life was devoted to music and to the company of his friends, poets, painters, musicians,
members, largely, of the cultivated middle class of Vienna. In this respect his life differs markedly from that of
Beethoven, who had come to Vienna with introductions to leading aristocratic patrons and who continued to
enjoy their support through the vicissitudes of the first quarter of the new century.

In the winter of 1816 Schubert moved into lodgings with his friend Franz von Schober, a young man of some
means, who had persuaded Schubert to abandon teaching and devote himself to music. Nine months later he
had rejoined his family, resuming his task as a teacher until the following summer, when more congenial
employment offered as music-master to the two young daughters of Count Johann Esterhzy at his Hungarian
summer residence at Zseliz, a connection continued when the family returned to Vienna for the winter season
and resumed less willingly in the summer of 1824. Throughout this period Schubert continued to compose
music of all kinds. His songs in particular won an audience among his friends and an association with the
operatic baritone Johann Michael Vogl proved helpful to him, not only in the performance of his songs but in the
establishment of some links with the theatre.
1822 brought a break in the life that Schubert had been sharing with his friends. Venereal infection and serious
illness compelled him to return home to his father's house, which he became too ill, for the moment, to leave,
until in May 1823 he was admitted to hospital, later enjoying a period of intermittent convalescence in the
country. The shadow of death did little to stem the flow of compositions, works in which publishers now were
showing an increasing interest, although never profitably enough to relieve Schubert from anxiety about
money. In 1825 he took rooms in the district of Wieden, near his friend, the painter Moritz von Schwind, and he
was able to enjoy the company of others of his circle in visits to the countryside. He continued to write music,
as prolific as he had ever been, and 1827, in spite of ill health, was as busy a year as any. At the end of March
1828 a concert consisting entirely of his own compositions was given, with the participation of Vogl and others,
to the enthusiasm of a well disposed audience, although the press had nothing to say about the event. In
September, in an attempt to find a place where he might in some measure restore his health, he moved to the
house of his brother Ferdinand on the outskirts of the city, but there grew increasingly ill, dying on the
afternoon of 19th November.

Schubert's Sonata in A major, D. 664, published posthumously in 1829 as Opus 120, has been plausibly
dated to 1819, the year of the Trout Quintet. In the summer of that year Schubert had accompanied Vogl on
his annual excursion to his native Steyr. There his acquaintance with Sylvester Paumgartner led to the
composition of the quintet, making use of Schubert's song Die Forelle (The Trout), that Paumgartner much
admired. It has been suggested that the Sonata in A major, which reflects much the same mood of delight in
the Styrian countryside, is to be identified with a sonata written for the pianist Josefine von Koller, whom he
met on the occasion of this first visit to Steyr. The first movement, with its song-like principal theme, breathes
the air of the country, its serenity only briefly broken in the central development. The D major andante opens
with some harmonic ambiguity, implicit in the principal theme, but any passing sadness is dispelled in the final
Allegro.

1817 was a year in which Schubert showed a particular interest in the sonata, writing six piano sonatas, of
which two are incomplete. The same year saw the composition of the violin and piano Duo Sonata, the B flat
String Trio and some sixty songs. Written in March, the A minor Sonata is the first of the 18l7 sonatas in order
of composition. It opens with a phrase that is answered by upper register arpeggios, with the initial figuration
providing a motif that finds a place in the transition to the subsidiary theme opening in the unexpected key of F
major. The end of the exposition makes use of a rhythmic and harmonic figure that proves of use in the central
development, after which the first theme reappears in the key of D minor, with A major established by the
second subject and A minor restored in the coda. The E major Allegretto has more of a song about its principal
theme. Schubert's adventurous sense of harmony allows a related secondary theme in C major and the return
of the opening theme in F major and further exploitation of a repeated rhythmic figure before the eventual
return of the opening theme and key. An ascending A minor scale, gently answered, summons the attention at
the start of the final Allegro vivace, a movement prodigal in musical ideas and leading to a final A major,
stressed only in the last chord of the sonata.

The so-called Wanderer Fantasia, the Fantasia in C major, Opus 15, D. 760, was written in November
1822 and published the following year. It was dedicated to Emmanuel, Edler von Liebenberg de Zsettin, a well-
to-do pupil of Mozart's pupil Hummel. The popular name of the Fantasia, The Wanderer, is taken from the 1816
song of that name, a setting of words by Schmidt von Lbeck, the theme of which is varied in the slow
movement of the Fantasia, a massive four-movement structure. The first movement of the Fantasia starts with
a dactylic rhythmic figure, found so often in the music of Schubert. A subsidiary thematic element derived from
this appears in the unexpected key of E major, with a further derivative in B flat, before still remoter keys are
explored. The movement closes after preparing the new key of C sharp minor for the following adagio and the
song-theme from which the Fantasia has taken its name. This material is varied and developed, to be
succeeded by an A flat major scherzo, again drawing on the same thematic resources. There is a trio section,
while the final section, starting in A minor, finds its way back to the original tonality of C major. In the last
movement Allegro left hand octaves state the theme again, answered in fugal style by the right hand, before
the entries of a third and fourth voice, leading on to a dynamic climax and a brilliant and emphatic C major
conclusion.

Jeno Jand
The Hungarian pianist Jeno Jand has won a number of piano competitions in Hungary and abroad, including
first prize in the 1973 Hungarian Piano Concours and a first prize in the chamber music category at the Sydney
International Piano Competition in 1977. He has recorded for Naxos all the piano concertos and sonatas of
Mozart. Other recordings for the Naxos label include the concertos of Grieg and Schumann as well as
Rachmaninov's Second Concerto and Paganini Rhapsody and Beethoven's complete piano sonatas.

Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)

6 Moments musicaux, Opus 94, D, 780


Allegretto in C minor, D. 915
3 Klavierstucke, D, 946
Franz Schubert was born in Vienna in 1797, the son of a schoolmaster who had followed his brother to the
Imperial capital from his native Moravia. Descended on his mother's side from Silesian stock, Schubert was as
Viennese in language and outlook as any other inhabitant of a city, the cultural strength of which lay in its very
mixture of races.

Schubert's family showed considerable musical enthusiasm, his father evidently the least proficient member of
the family string quartet, in which he played the cello. Schubert himself, like Mozart before him, played the
violin and viola, and was a proficient enough keyboard-player, if no great virtuoso. His musical and general
education was at the Staatskonvikt, an institution he attended as a member of the choir of the Imperial Chapel
directed by the Kapellmeister Antonio Salieri, his composition teacher. In 1812, when his voice broke, he left
the choir and rather than continue an education that would have distracted him from music he chose in 1814 to
embark on a course of teacher training, joining his father in the family business as an assistant teacher in the
following year.

During these early years Schubert had shown considerable musical precocity. His first surviving compositions
date from 1810 and by the following year he had embarked on the writing of the first of the many song settings
in which his particular genius in melodic invention is shown. 1811 brought his first attempt at opera, a medium
in which he never achieved any particular distinction, and his ambitious attempts at others forms of vocal and
instrumental music. The following years brought a flood of music of all kinds so that by the end of the year in
which he completed his formal education he had already written, among other things three symphonies, a
dozen or so string quartets and some fifty songs.

As a school-teacher Schubert showed little ability or interest and in 1816 he gave up the attempt, living
thereafter intermittently with various friends, busy as a composer and as an important figure in his own circle,
but never enjoying any official position as a musician. His last years were darkened by illness of syphilitic origin
that first made itself known in 1823, its predictable and fatal progress awakening immediate fears for his life.
He died in 1828, the year of the first public concert dedicated to his music, at a time when publishers were
showing an increased interest in his work.

Schubert's six Momens musicals, which might more correctly have appeared as Moments musicaux, were
published in Vienna in 1828 by Leidesdorf, with whom the composer had come to an agreement in 1822 to
provide songs for two years in return for a regular payment of 480 florins. The sixth of the later Musical
Moments was published in 1824 in a Christmas album under the title Les Plaintes d'un Troubadour. Like the
Impromptus these short piano pieces seem to owe a debt to the Bohemian composer Tomasek and his pupil Jan
Vorlsek. The third of the set is in Rosamunde vein and the fourth in Baroque style. The Allegretto in C minor
belongs in form to the same group of pieces and was given by the composer to his friend Ferdinand Watcher,
an official in the War Ministry, on his departure for Venice, the base of the Imperial fleet, in May 1827. It forms
the composer's brief adieu to his friend, hinting at his soon return.

The three Piano Pieces of May 1828 were to be published only forty years later. The first, described by
Alfred Einstein as in the French manner, includes an original additional Andantino A flat section. The last, in the
tripartite form so often used for music of this kind, Einstein sees as Hungarian, with the second of the pieces,
more elaborate in structure, based on an Italian cavatina, its contrasting episodes moving into ever remoter
keys. The pieces, in spite of Einstein's contrary view, do not seem to have been conceived as a single work but
were published in this form by Brahms in 1868.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Overture in F major, Op. 34, D. 675 Fantasie in F minor, Op. 103, D. 940 Deutscher with Trios
and Two Lndler, D. 618 Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 82 No. 2, D. 968a

Trois Marches hroques, Op. 27, D. 602

Franz Schubert was born in Vienna in 1797, the son of a schoolmaster, and spent the greater part of
his short life in the city. His parents had settled in Vienna, his father moving there from Moravia in
1783 to join his schoolmaster brother at a school in the suburb of Leopoldstadt and marrying in
1785 a woman who had her origins in Silesia and was to bear him fourteen children. Franz Schubert
was the twelfth of these and the fourth to survive infancy. He began to learn the piano at the age of
five, with the help of his brother Ignaz, twelve years his senior, and three years later started to learn
the violin, while serving as a chorister at Liechtental church. From there he applied, on the
recommendation of Antonio Salieri, to join the Imperial Chapel, into which he was accepted in
October 1808, as a chorister now allowed to study at the Akademisches Gymnasium, boarding at
the Stadtkonvikt, his future education guaranteed.

During his schooldays Schubert formed friendships that he was to maintain for the rest of his life.
After his voice broke in 1812, he was offered, as expected, a scholarship to enable him to continue
his general education, but he chose instead to train as a primary school teacher, while devoting more
time to music and, in particular, to composition, the art to which he was already making a prolific
contribution. In 1815 he joined his father as an assistant teacher, but showed no great aptitude or
liking for the work. Instead he was able to continue the earlier friendships he had formed at school
and form new acquaintances. His meeting in 1816 with Franz von Schober allowed him to accept an
invitation to live in the latters apartment, an arrangement that relieved him of the necessity of
earning his keep in the schoolroom. In August 1817 he returned home again, when room was
needed by Schober for his dying brother, and resumed his place, for the moment, in the classroom.
The following summer he spent in part at Zseliz in Hungary as music tutor to the two daughters of
Count Johann Karl Esterhzy von Galnta, before returning to Vienna to lodge with a new friend,
the poet Johann Mayrhofer, an arrangement that continued until near the end of 1820, after which
Schubert spent some months living alone, now able to afford the necessary rent.

By this period of his life it seemed that Schubert was on the verge of solid success as a composer
and musician. Thanks to his friends, in particular the older singer Johann Michael Vogl, Leopold
von Sonnleithner and others, his music was winning an audience. There was collaboration with
Schober on a new opera, later rejected by the Court Opera, but in other respects his name was
becoming known as a composer, beyond his immediate circle. He lodged once again with the
Schobers in 1822 and 1823 and it was at this time that his health began to deteriorate, through a
venereal infection that was then incurable. This illness overshadowed the remaining years of his life
and was the cause of his early death. It has been thought a direct consequence of the dissolute way
of life into which Schober introduced him and which for a time alienated him from some of his
former friends. The following years brought intermittent returns to his fathers house, and a
continuation of social life that often centred on his own musical accomplishments and of his intense
activity as a composer. In February 1828 the first public concert of his music was given in Vienna,
an enterprise that proved financially successful, and he was able to spend the summer with friends,
including Schober, before moving, in September, to the suburb of Wieden to stay with his brother
Ferdinand, in the hope that his health might improve. Social activities continued, suggesting that he
was unaware of the imminence of his death, but at the end of October he was taken ill at dinner and
in the following days his condition became worse. He died on 19th November.

In the summer of 1819 Schubert had accompanied Vogl on a visit to Steyr and to Linz, an excursion
that had its direct musical result in the Trout Quintet, written for friends in the former town. In
Vienna again he began in November his fifth setting of the Mass and completed settings of poems
by Goethe and Schiller. It was the same period that probably saw the composition of the piano duet
Overture in F major, D. 675, the only one of his four duet overtures that was not a transcription of
an orchestral work. The Overture starts in F minor with a strongly marked dramatic Adagio, before
an Allegro that introduces the principal thematic material, leading to a rapid concluding passage in a
furious 6/8 metre. The work was published in 1825 as the composers opus 34.

The very much more substantial Fantasie in F minor, D. 940, was written between January and
April in 1828, the last year of Schuberts life, and published posthumously the following year as
opus 103. It was dedicated to Caroline, Countess Esterhzy, the younger of the two daughters of
Johann Karl Count Esterhzy of Galnta, a kinsman of Haydns patrons, whom Schubert had taught
during summer months at Zseliz in 1818 and 1824, remaining in contact with the family when they
were in Vienna. The Fantasie marks the height of his achievement in this genre. It opens in a
poignant F minor, with the opening melody soon briefly transformed into F major, before the
reassertion of the original minor. There is a shaft of sunlight again before the second section,
marked Largo and in F sharp minor, leading to a singing major key melody. The stark dotted
rhythms give way to an Allegro vivace, with a D major trio. The final section brings a return of the
poignant F minor melody of the opening and a contrapuntal continuation, before the work comes to
an end.

The Deutscher were written in 1818, characteristic of music that had a defined social purpose. The
dance frames two trios, the second in a contrasting C major, before the original key of G returns in
the repeated opening dance. The following Lndler are not so designated but are clearly in the form
of that dance. These works were not published until 1909.

Schuberts Variations on an Original Theme, D. 968a, were presumably written in 1818 or 1824,
although some have doubted their authenticity. The work was presumably intended for his pupils at
Zseliz, one of a series of such compositions for the two Esterhzy girls. It was first published in
1860. There is an Introduction, ending in a short cadenza for the upper player and followed by the
simple theme. The first variation is characterized by triplet rhythms, with the second in more rapid
figuration. The third variation is aptly marked Brillante and followed by a slower version of the
material. The variations end with a lively Finale.

The Trois Marches hroques, D. 602, were intended for a similar purpose and may be dated either
to 1818 or 1824. They were published in the latter year. The first March, in B minor, uses material
that had been written in 1816 for an uncompleted setting for voices and piano of Schillers Die
Schlacht. The three Marches follow the expected form and rhythm, each with a contrasting trio
section.

Keith Anderson

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Piano Sonata in B major, Op. 147, D. 575 Piano Sonata in D major, Op. 53, D. 850

Franz Schubert was born in Vienna in 1797, the son of a schoolmaster, and spent the greater part of his short
life in the city. His parents had settled in Vienna, his father moving there from Moravia in 1783 to join his
schoolmaster brother at a school in the suburb of Leopoldstadt and marrying in 1785 a woman who had her
origins in Silesia and was to bear him fourteen children. Franz Schubert was the twelfth of these and the fourth
to survive infancy. He began to learn the piano at the age of five, with the help of his brother Ignaz, twelve
years his senior, and three years later started to learn the violin, while serving as a chorister at Liechtental
church. From there he applied, on the recommendation of Antonio Salieri, to join the Imperial Chapel, into
which he was accepted in October 1808, as a chorister now allowed to study at the Akademisches Gymnasium,
boarding at the Stadtkonvikt, his future education guaranteed.

During his schooldays Schubert formed friendships that he was to maintain for the rest of his life. After his
voice broke in 1812, he was offered, as expected, a scholarship to enable him to continue his general
education, but he chose, instead, to train as a primary school teacher, while devoting more time to music and,
in particular, to composition, to which he was already making a prolific contribution. In 1815 he was able to join
his father as an assistant teacher, but showed no great aptitude or liking for the work. Instead he was able to
continue the earlier friendships he had formed at school and form new acquaintances. His meeting in 1816 with
Franz von Schober allowed him to accept an invitation to live in the latters apartment, an arrangement that
relieved him of the necessity of earning his keep in the schoolroom. In August 1817 he returned home again,
when room was needed by Schober for his dying brother, and resumed his place, for the moment, in the
classroom. The following summer he spent in part at Zseliz in Hungary as music tutor to the two daughters of
Count Johann Karl Esterhzy von Galnta, before returning to Vienna to lodge with a new friend, the poet
Johann Mayrhofer, an arrangement that continued until near the end of 1820, after which Schubert spent some
months living alone, now able to afford the necessary rent.

By this period of his life it seemed that Schubert was on the verge of solid success as a composer and musician.
Thanks to his friends, in particular the older singer Johann Michael Vogl, a schoolfriend of Mozarts pupil
Sssmayr, Leopold von Sonnleithner and others, his music was winning an audience. There was collaboration
with Schober on a new opera, later rejected by the Court Opera, but in other respects his name was becoming
known as a composer, beyond his immediate circle. He lodged once again with the Schobers in 1822 and 1823
and it was at this time that his health began to deteriorate, through a venereal infection that was then
incurable. This illness overshadowed the remaining years of his life and was the cause of his early death. It has
been thought a direct consequence of the dissolute way of life into which Schober introduced him and which for
a time alienated him from some of his former friends. The following years brought intermittent returns to his
fathers house, since 1818 in the suburb of Rossau, and a continuation of social life that often centred on his
own musical accomplishments and of his intense activity as a composer. In February 1828 the first public
concert of his music was given in Vienna, an enterprise that proved financially successful, and he was able to
spend the summer with friends, including Schober, before moving, in September, to the suburb of Wieden to
stay with his brother Ferdinand, in the hope that his health might improve. Social activities continued,
suggesting that he was unaware of the imminence of his death, but at the end of October he was taken ill at
dinner and in the following days his condition became worse. He died on 19th November.

During Schuberts final years publishers had started to show an interest in his work. He had fulfilled
commissions for the theatre and delighted his friends with songs, piano pieces and chamber music. It was with
his songs, above all, that Schubert won a lasting reputation and to this body of work that he made a
contribution equally remarkable for its quality as for its quantity, with settings of poems by major and minor
poets, a reflection of literary interests of the period. His gift for the invention of an apt and singable melody is
reflected in much else that he wrote.

Schuberts early attempts at the composition of piano sonatas came in 1815, but his first complete work in the
form so intimidatingly developed by Beethoven over the years was the Sonata in A minor of March 1817.
Further such works followed, with a final completed Sonata in B major, D.575, the first in a full four
movements, written in August of the same year and published posthumously in 1846 as Op.147. The first
movement starts with a summons to attention, gently answered, before moving into G major and shifting back
to E major for the second subject, followed by a closing section in the expected dominant. The opening figure,
now in the minor, starts the central development, with an appropriate adjustment of keys for the final
recapitulation. The E major slow movement offers an opening melody that returns in a varied form after a
contrasting central section, and there is a G major Scherzo framing a D major Trio. The sonata ends with a
cheerful tripartite sonata-form movement.

1818 and 1819 brought further unfinished sonatas and in 1823 came the Sonata in A minor, D.784, a three-
movement work. In the spring of 1825 Schubert returned to the form once more, with an unfinished sonata in
April and a completed work in A minor by the end of May. In August he composed his Sonata in D major,
D.850, published the following year with a dedication to his friend, the pianist Karl Maria von Bocklet. Bocklet
had settled in Vienna in 1817, first as a violinist at the Theater an der Wien, before embarking on a
distinguished career as a pianist. In December 1827 he joined the violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh and the cellist
Josef Linke in the first performance of Schuberts Piano Trio in E flat major, D.929, and took part in a
performance of the same work at the memorial concert for Schubert given in January 1829. In late 1825
Schubert joined Vogl on a summer tour through the Salzkammergut, of which Schubert left an unfinished
account. It took them, by August, to Bad Gastein, and it was there, during a stay of three weeks, that the
D major Sonata was written.
The first movement of the sonata opens with forthright determination, exploring various keys in a transition
that leads to a lilting second subject. The opening motif of the sonata introduces the relatively extended central
development, followed by the emphatic start of the recapitulation. The gently lyrical A major second movement
explores a multitude of keys in varied versions of the material, to be followed by a resolute Scherzo, framing a
chordal G major Trio. The final Rondo seems to reflect the surroundings in which it was written, with a principal
theme redolent of the Austrian countryside, contrasted with an intervening suggestion of contrapuntal activity
and a song-like G major episode. The main theme returns in rapid variation, before the work comes to a
hushed close.

Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)

Sonata in C Minor, D. 958


Sonata in B Flat Major, D. 960

Franz Schubert was born in Vienna in 1797, the son of a school-master, whose path it seemed he might follow
as an assistant teacher. He enjoyed a sound musical training as a cathedral chorister and when his voice broke
in 1812 rejected the offered scholarship and further general education in favour of a career that allowed him
more time for music. In 1814 he embarked on a course as a primary school teacher and the following year
joined his father, although he showed no great aptitude for his new profession, which he was to practise
intermittently, as need arose, for a year or so. The greater part of the remaining years of his life were devoted
to music and to the company of his friends. By the time of his death in 1828 some of his music had been
published and there was increasing interest in his compositions. Nevertheless he never held any official position
in the musical establishment in Vienna and much of what he wrote was intended for the entertainment of his
own circle, which included bath professional and amateur musicians, poets and painters.

The death of Beethoven in 1827 seems to have suggested to Schubert the possibility that he might become his
musical successor. This ambition, whether overt or not, found some immediate expression in the three piano
sonatas of 1828, completed in September, some six weeks before his own death. Schubert proposed a
dedication to Hummel, a pupil of Mozart, leading pianist and successful composer, whom he had met in 1827.
When the sonatas were finally published, posthumously, the dedication by the publisher was to Robert
Schumann, who did much to bring the music of Schubert to public notice in the second quarter of the 19th
century. Schubert played all three sonatas on 27th September at a party at the house of Dr. Ignaz Menz.

The Sonata in C minor, D. 958, opens with a heroic figure that Beethoven might have used. There is a gentler
second subject in the expected key of E flat major, and a central development that starts dramatically enough,
before moving into a much gentler mood which nevertheless explores the wider range of the contemporary
piano. The A fiat major Adagio is daring in its harmonic imagination, a sign of things to come. It is followed by a
C minor Minuet with an A fiat major Trio. The final rondo has the vigour and energy of a tarantella, its headlong
rhythm interrupted by contrasting episodes.

The last of the 1828 sonatas, the Sonata in B flat major, D. 960, opens in a manner characteristic of many of
Schubert's songs and its gentle first theme dominates the extended movement. The slow movement, moving
from C sharp minor to A major and to a final C sharp major has about it a beautiful serenity and is followed by
a delicately graceful scherzo in B fiat major, framing a solemn Trio in the tonic minor key. The final rondo starts
in harmonic ambiguity, suggesting the influence of Beethoven's substituted final movement for his Opus 130
String Quartet, and exemplifying the quality of heavenly length so often cited by writers on Schubert.

Jeno Jand
Jeno Jand was born at Pcs, in south Hungary, in 1952. He started to learn the piano when he was seven and
later studied at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music under Katalin Nemes and Pl Kadosa, becoming assistant to
the latter on his graduation in 1974. Jand has won a number of piano competitions in Hungary and abroad,
including first prize in the 1973 Hungarian Piano Concours and a first prize in the chamber music category at
the Sydney International Piano Competition in 1977. In addition to his many appearances in Hungary, he has
played widely abroad in Eastern and Western Europe, in Canada and in Japan. He has recorded all Mozart's
piano concertos and sonatas for Naxos. Other recordings for the Naxos label include the concertos of Grieg and
Schumann as well as Rachmaninov's Second concerto and Paganini Rhapsody and the complete piano sonatas
of Beethoven.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Piano Sonata No. 20 in A major, D. 959 Piano Sonata No. 15 in C major, D. 840

Franz Schubert was born in Vienna in 1797, the son of a schoolmaster, and spent the greater part of his short
life in the city. His parents had settled in Vienna, his father moving there from Moravia in 1783 to join his
schoolmaster brother at a school in the suburb of Leopoldstadt and marrying in 1785 a woman who had her
origins in Silesia and was to bear him fourteen children. Franz Schubert was the twelfth of these and the fourth
to survive infancy. He began to learn the piano at the age of five, with the help of his brother Ignaz, twelve
years his senior, and three years later started to learn the violin, while serving as a chorister at Liechtental
church. From there he applied, on the recommendation of Antonio Salieri, to join the Imperial Chapel, into
which he was accepted in October 1808, as a chorister now allowed to study at the Akademisches Gymnasium,
boarding at the Stadtkonvikt, his future education guaranteed.

During his schooldays Schubert formed friendships that he was to maintain for the rest of his life. After his
voice broke in 1812, he was offered, as expected, a scholarship to enable him to continue his general
education, but he chose, instead, to train as a primary school teacher, while devoting more time to music and,
in particular, to composition, the art to which he was already making a prolific contribution. In 1815 he was
able to join his father as an assistant teacher, but showed no great aptitude or liking for the work. Instead he
was able to continue the earlier friendships he had formed at school and form new acquaintances. His meeting
in 1816 with Franz von Schober allowed him to accept an invitation to live in the latters apartment, an
arrangement that relieved him of the necessity of earning his keep in the schoolroom. In August 1817 he
returned home again, when room was needed by Schober for his dying brother, and resumed his place, for the
moment, in the classroom. The following summer he spent in part at Zseliz in Hungary as music tutor to the
two daughters of Count Johann Karl Esterhzy von Galnta, before returning to Vienna to lodge with a new
friend, the poet Johann Mayrhofer, an arrangement that continued until near the end of 1820, after which
Schubert spent some months living alone, now able to afford the necessary rent.

By this period of his life it seemed that Schubert was on the verge of solid success as a composer and musician.
Thanks to his friends, in particular the older singer Johann Michael Vogl, a schoolfriend of Mozarts pupil
Sssmayr, Leopold von Sonnleithner and others, his music was winning an audience. There was collaboration
with Schober on a new opera, later rejected by the Court Opera, but in other respects his name was becoming
known as a composer beyond his immediate circle. He lodged once again with the Schobers in 1822 and 1823
and it was at this time that his health began to deteriorate, through a venereal infection that was then
incurable. This illness overshadowed the remaining years of his life and was the cause of his early death. It has
been thought a direct consequence of the dissolute way of life into which Schober introduced him and which for
a time alienated him from some of his former friends. The following years brought intermittent returns to his
fathers house, since 1818 in the suburb of Rossau, and a continuation of social life that often centred on his
own musical accomplishments, and of his intense activity as a composer. In February 1828 the first public
concert of his music was given in Vienna, an enterprise that proved financially successful, and he was able to
spend the summer with friends, including Schober, before moving, in September, to the suburb of Wieden to
stay with his brother Ferdinand, in the hope that his health might improve. Social activities continued,
suggesting that he was unaware of the imminence of his death, but at the end of October he was taken ill at
dinner and in the following days his condition became worse. He died on 19th November.

During Schuberts final years publishers had started to show an interest in his work. He had fulfilled
commissions for the theatre and delighted his friends with songs, piano pieces and chamber music. It was with
his songs, above all, that Schubert won a lasting reputation and to this body of work that he made a
contribution equally remarkable for its quality as for its quantity, with settings of poems by major and minor
poets, a reflection of literary interests of the period. His gift for the invention of an apt and singable melody is
reflected in much else that he wrote.

In the last year of his life Schubert was involved in continuing negotiations with publishers. The previous year
he had met Heinrich Albert Probst, German agent for Artaria, who had shown a positive interest in his work and
was publishing the Piano Trio in E flat major, Op. 100. On 2nd October Schubert wrote to Probst for the last
time, asking when the Trio was to appear and offering him settings of Heine, the Quintet in C major and three
piano sonatas. Probst, however, expressed an interest only in the songs and any new piano duets. An attempt
to interest Schott, with its Paris office, in his new set of Impromptus came to nothing. Schubert had intended to
dedicate his three sonatas to Hummel, but they were finally published by Diabelli only in 1839, two years after
Hummels death.

The three piano sonatas mentioned in Schuberts letter to Probst were all completed in September 1828. The
second of these final works for the piano, the Sonata in A major, D. 959, shows the influence of Beethoven, not
least in the opening bars of the first movement. The central development section makes telling use of a brief
figure that only first appeared towards the end of the exposition and now assumes considerable importance,
before the return of the opening material in recapitulation. The second movement, marked Andantino, related
in its key, F sharp minor, and lilt to Schuberts setting of his friend Schobers Pilgerweise, is interrupted by a
tempestuous central section, before the opening mood is restored in a varied version of the principal theme.
The Scherzo, again suggesting Beethovens handling of the form, frames a D major Trio, while the final Rondo
offers a principal theme that recalls the secondary theme of the slow movement of the Sonata in A minor, D.
537, written eleven years before. The mood is that of a Schubert song, although the main theme is immediately
varied in a more elaborate and less vocal form, to return in various guises between intervening contrasting
episodes.
The Sonata in C major, D. 840, left unfinished and known as Reliquie, was started in the spring of 1825. In
1839 Schuberts brother Ferdinand gave the manuscript to Schumann and it was finally published in 1861,
when it acquired its unfortunate title. The first two movements were completed, the third movement Trio is
complete, but the Scherzo itself breaks off before the return of the main theme. The final Rondo, a form that
offered Schubert problems of discipline that he found difficult to meet, ends after 272 not very convincing bars.
The first movement opens with a theme reflected in the following Sonata in A minor, D. 845, and attention has
been drawn to the almost orchestral conception of the sonatas, which immediately preceded work on the Great
C major Symphony. The second subject first appears in less probable keys, and there is high drama in the
central development, before the final recapitulation, in varied form. The C minor Andante starts hesitantly, with
strong dynamic contrasts before the introduction of a contrasting section in A flat major. There is further drama
as both elements return in varied form, before the final re-establishment of the original key and theme.

Keith Anderson

Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)


Four Impromptus Opus 90 D. 899
Four Impromptus Opus 142 D. 935

Franz Schubert was born in Vienna in 1797, the son of a schoolmaster who had followed his brother to the
Imperial capital from his native Moravia. Descended on his mother's side from Silesian stock, Schubert was as
Viennese in language and outlook as any other inhabitant of the city, the cultural strength of which lay in its
very mixture of races.

Schubert's family showed considerable musical enthusiasm, his father evidently the least proficient member of
the family string quartet, in which he played the cello. Schubert himself, like Mozart before him, played the
violin and viola, and was a proficient enough keyboard-player, if no great virtuoso. His musical and general
education was at the Staatskonvikt, an institution he attended as a member of the choir of the Imperial Chapel
directed by the Kapellmeister Antonio Salieri, his composition teacher. In 1812, when his voice broke, he left
the choir and rather than continue an education that would have distracted him from music he chose in 1814 to
embark on a course of teacher training, joining his father in the family business as an assistant teacher in the
following year.

During these early years Schubert had shown considerable musical precocity. His first surviving compositions
date from 1810 and by the following year he had embarked on the writing of the first of the many song settings
in which his particular genius in melodic invention is shown. 1811 brought his first attempt at opera, a medium
in which he never achieved any particular distinction, and his ambitious attempts at other forms of vocal and
instrumental music. The following years brought a flood of music of all kinds so that by the end of the year in
which he completed his formal education he had already written, among other things, three symphonies, a
dozen or so string quartets and some fifty songs.

As a school-teacher Schubert showed little ability or interest and in 1816 he gave up the attempt, living
thereafter intermittently with various friends, busy as a composer and as an important figure in his own circle,
but never enjoying any official position as a musician. His last years were darkened by illness of syphilitic origin
that first made itself known in 1823, its predictable and fatal progress awakening immediate fears for his life.
He died in 1828, the year of the first public concert dedicated to his music, at a time when publishers were
showing an increased interest in his work.

The title Impromptu seems entirely typical of the careless rapture associated popularly with Romanticism.
Suggesting improvisation or, at least, sudden inspiration, the word made its first musical appearance in 1822
with a set of six Impromptus by the Bohemian composer Jan Vaclav Vorisek, a piano pupil of Hummel,
composition pupil of the influential Prague composer Tomasek, and from 1818 conductor of the Vienna
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. In the same year another composer of Bohemian origin, Marschner, wrote a set
of Impromptus, based on a theme by his pianist wife. Of Schubert's eight Impromptus the first four were so
named by his publisher, Tobias Haslinger. The first two of the set appeared as part of Opus 90 in 1827, the
second pair, Opus 90 Nos.3 and 4, only in 1857. The second group of Impromptus, written in December 1827,
was clearly intended as a continuation of the first. These were published in 1839 and were thought by
Schumann to form a four-movement piano sonata, a conclusion he reached because of the choice of related
keys. It might be added that Schubert's Sonata in G major, D894, had been issued by Haslinger as separate
pieces, each under its own title, a form that might have seemed more in keeping with the spirit of the time.

The C minor Impromptu opens dramatically and is based on a single theme, related, as so often in Schubert's
work, to a song. The second, in E flat, is brilliant, but with the kind of technical demands that deterred Schott's
Paris branch from publishing the second group of Impromptus. For the French amateur market, at least, pieces
had to be brilliant and easy. The G flat Impromptu is full of feeling, in a mood that Chopin was to develop, and
the final A flat Impromptu of the set, with its C sharp minor Trio section, is as harmonically adventurous as
anything Schubert wrote.
The second group of Impromptus opens with an F minor movement which Schumann chose to regard as a
sonata first movement, although its central section, as Schumann admits, is unusual. The second Impromptu,
in the relative major key of A flat major, Schumann describes as contemplative, while rejecting the third, the
most familiar to us of all, for w hat he considers an undistinguished theme - the Rosamunde theme of the
famous entr'acte and A minor Quartet - and moderately or completely undistinguished variations. This
Schumann would omit from his hypothetical sonata, allowing it to end with the fourth Impromptu, marked
Allegro scherzando and certainly acceptable as an example of a final Rondo.

Jeno Jand
Jeno Jand was born at Pcs, in south Hungary, in 1952. He started to learn the piano when he was seven and
later studied at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music under Katalin Nemes and Pl Kadosa, becoming assistant to
the latter on his graduation in 1974. Jand has won a number of piano competitions in Hungary and abroad,
including first prize in the 1973 Hungarian Piano Concours and a first prize in the chamber music category at
the Sydney International Piano Competition in 1977. In addition to his many appearances in Hungary, he has
played widely abroad in Eastern and Western Europe, in Canada and in Japan.

He is currently engaged in a project to record all Mozart's piano concertos for Naxos. Other recordings for the
Naxos label include the concertos of Grieg and Schumann as well as Rachmaninov's Second Concerto and
Paganini Rhapsody and Beethoven's complete piano sonatas.

Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)

Allegro in A minor, Lebensstrme, D. 947


Deux marches caractristiques, D. 886
Divertissement la hongroise, D. 818

Franz Schubert was born in Vienna in 1797, the son of a schoolmaster, whose path it seemed he might follow
as an assistant teacher. He enjoyed a sound musical training as a cathedral chorister and when his voice broke
in 1812 rejected the offered scholarship and further general education in favour of a career that allowed him
more time for music. In 1814 he embarked on a course as a primary school teacher and the following year
joined his father, although he showed no great aptitude for his new profession, which he was to practise
intermittently, as need arose, for a year or so. The greater part of the remaining years of his life were devoted
to music and to the company of his friends. By the time of his death in 1828 some of his music had been
published and there was increasing interest in his compositions. Nevertheless he never held any official position
in the musical establishment in Vienna and much of what he wrote was intended for the entertainment of his
own circle, which included both professional and amateur musicians, poets and painters.

It was natural, in the circumstances of the time and of his own social circle, that Schubert should write a
considerable amount of music for piano duet. His first music in this form was written in 1810, when he was still
at school and the last, including Lebensstrme, in 1828, the year of his death, itself the result of a debilitating
and then incurable venereal infection contracted some six years earlier. The title Lebensstrme was the later
invention of the publisher Diabelli, who issued the work in 1840. It is far more than the characteristic piece
advertised, a sonata movement of symphonic dimensions, for which it has been suggested the Grand Rondo of
the same year might have been intended as a finale. The sonata movement was completed in May 1828.

The Two Characteristic Marches were probably written in 1826. The circumstances of their composition are not
known, but they come at a period of Schubert's life when he was writing a number of such works, some more
obviously intended for publication, such as the piano duet marches to mark the death of Tsar Alexander I and
the coronation of his successor Nicholas I, written about the same period. The two C major Marches are
vigorous and popular additions to piano duet repertoire.

In 1818 Schubert had the good fortune to find summer employment as music teacher to the two
young daughters of Count Johann Karl Esterhzy at his country house at Zseliz in Hungary. He left
Vienna in June and stayed at Zseliz until November, when he was glad to return to his friends in the
city. Life at Zseliz offered security, the companionship of a pretty maidservant, pleasing young
pupils and the chance to compose without undue disturbance. Six years later, in 1824, he resumed
his summer employment at Zseliz, this time on more favourable conditions, but now Schubert was
sobered by his illness and by recurrent thoughts of death, feelings alleviated to some extent by the
presence of the younger of his two pupils, the eighteen-year-old Countess Karoline. As on his
earlier visit, he wrote piano duets for the young countesses, but the Divertissement a la hongroise,
written after his return to Vienna, was not among these compositions. At its heart, however, is a
Hungarian melody written down during his stay, and this suggested the extended work, in three
movements, that proved extremely popular after its publication in 1826. The middle movement is a
march in C minor, with a contrasting trio, while the outer movements, in what might be considered
characteristic Hungarian style, include the typical stressed rhythms and melancholy turns of melody
associated with the genre. Schubert dedicated the Divertissement to Katharina von Lszny, a singer
married to a Hungarian. It was through her that Schubert in 1827 met Hummel and his pupil
Ferdinand Hiller. The Divertissement is an attractive work and hardly deserved the criticism of
Wagner, who found it trivial, and of Mendelssohn, who found its rhythms monotonous. Liszt
thought well enough of the work to arrange it for one player and to orchestrate the march.

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