Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 02/07/2006, uploaded on 01/19/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Sonata in B-flat Major, D.960, Op. posthumous            Franz Schubert

Molto moderato; Andante sostenuto; Allegro vivace con delicatezza; Allegro ma non troppo

Schubert had been ill for years, but in 1828 he went into steady decline and died in November at 31. Yet from those last months came a steady stream of masterpieces, and few of the achievements of that year seem more remarkable than the composition of three large-scale piano sonatas in the month of September, barely eight weeks before his death. In the years following Schubert's death, many of the works from this final year were recognized as the masterpieces they are, but the three piano sonatas made their way much more slowly. When they appeared in 1838, a decade after Schubert's death, the publisher dedicated them to Schumann, one of Schubert's greatest admirers, but even Schumann confessed mystification, noting with a kind of dismayed condescension that "Always musical and rich in songlike themes, these pieces ripple on, page after page . . ." It took Artur Schnabel's championing these sonatas to rescue them from obscurity, and today the last of them, the Sonata in B-flat Major, has become one of the best-loved.

It is dangerous to assume that a composer's final works must be haunted by premonitions of death. Schubert's final works do not agonize in the way the Mahler Tenth or Shostakovich Fourteenth Symphonies do. But it remains true that as Schubert's condition worsened across the span of that final year, his music took on a depth and poignancy rare in his works. And it is hard not to hear in the beginning of the Sonata in B-flat Major a direct premonition of mortality. The Molto moderato begins simply with a flowing chordal melody of unusual expressiveness. But in the eighth measure comes a discordant trill deep in the left hand, and the music glides to a complete stop. The silence that follows-Schubert marks it with a fermata to be sure that it is prolonged-is one of the few genuinely terrifying moments in music. It is as if a moment of freezing terror has crept into this flow of gentle song. Out of the silence the theme resumes. Again the deep trill intrudes, but this time the music rides over it and continues. Claudio Arrau has spoken of this movement as one written "in the proximity of death," and it is some of the most expressive music Schubert ever wrote. This is a long movement, full of the harmonic freedom that marks Schubert's best music; it ends quietly in B-flat Major with a chorale-like restatement of the main theme.

The Andante sostenuto is as moving as the first movement. The somber opening melody, in the unexpected key of c-sharp minor, proceeds darkly in the right hand, while the left hand offers an unusual accompaniment that skips through a four-octave range, reaching up above the right hand's melody. The middle section is of a nobility that might almost be called Brahmsian.  By contrast, the quicksilvery scherzo flashes across the keyboard with a main theme that moves easily between the pianist's hands; at times the rhythms and easy flow make this seem more like a waltz than a scherzo. Schubert specifies that it should be played con delicatezza, and certainly its smooth modulations between A major and B-flat major are accomplished most delicately; the brief trio is enlivened by off-the-beat accents. The finale-Allegro, ma non troppo-dances along its two main ideas. The writing is brilliant and once again full of harmonic surprises, but in the midst of all this sparkle one hears a wistful, expressive depth that stays to haunt the mind.

Program Notes by Eric Bromberger © 2003

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.