Ten years separate the composition of these two piano sonatas by Franz Schubert. The earlier one, in A minor, was completed in 1817 when Schubert was just twenty, but had already written some 250 lieder. Having left several incomplete piano sonatas in the preceding years, he returned to the form with renewed enthusiasm, perhaps inspired…
Tag: Schubert piano sonatas
Contrasting albums from recent Leeds competition winners
Alim Beisembayev and Eric Lu, winners of the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2021 and 2018 respectively, have both released new albums. Eric Lu impressed at the 2018 competition with his beautiful tone and the phrase “poet of the piano” is regularly attached to his playing. Elegant lyricism is highly appealing, especially in the music…
Stephen Hough plays Schubert
Piano Sonatas D664, 769a & 894 – Stephen Hough (piano). Hyperion, 2022 Schubert’s “heavenly length”, a term coined by Schumann specifically in relation to Schubert’s ‘Great’ C major Symphony, is also very much in evidence in the late piano sonatas, whose first movements can last as long as an entire Beethoven sonata. There is a…
Sarah Beth Briggs makes The Austrian Connection
‘The Austrian Connection’ traces the compositional links between four Austrian composers: Hans Gál (1890-1987) was perhaps the last great composer to uphold the tonal Austro-German tradition that began with Haydn and Mozart, and, arguably, reached its apogee in the music of Schubert
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