Schubert: Piano Sonata in A min D.784 1st mvt. (Lisa Yui, pianist)

The Lives of the Piano with Lisa Yui - feat. Ludwig
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Lisa Yui performs Franz Schubert's Piano Sonata in A minor D.784 (1st movement)
Venue: Yamaha Artist Services Salon, New York City
lisayui.com
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FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828)
The Sonata in A minor, D784 (1823), and the Sonata in B flat major, D960 (1828), are the first and last of Schubert’s mature works in this form, and the former was almost certainly written at the time that Schubert first learned of the seriousness of his illness. The chilling desolation of its first movement’s first subject seems to be a direct response to that tragic news, the ‘strong-weak’ appoggiatura in bar 2 sighing wearily or angrily throughout the entire movement in both melody and accompaniment. However, as in so much of Schubert’s work, it is the moments of major tonality which seem the saddest. Perhaps only Mozart equals Schubert in this ability to transform the sunshine of a major key into a mood of heartbreak and pain.
The second movement is strangely unsettling for three reasons: because of the almost enforced normality of its theme after the bittersweet bleakness of the first movement; because this theme is doubled in the tenor voice, a claustrophobic companion seeming to drag it down; and because of the constant, murmuring interjections (ppp) between the theme’s statements. The helter-skelter finale introduces a note of panic, as triplets trip over themselves in their scurrying counterpoint. Here, as in the first movement, the glorious second subject, in the major, seems unsure whether to laugh or cry, calling to mind Rückert’s poem Lachen und Weinen which Schubert set the same year.
"Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right to the soul. Beauty is a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it." (Simone Weil)
from notes by Stephen Hough © 1998
from www.hyperion-r...

[@alanleoneldavid1787]

The cat is so cute. currently learning this sonata

[@raiscl]

hum... those octaves were written differently than what you are doing ;-). Nice analysis and performance though! I like the way you play with the dynamics and colors =D

[@LivesOfThePiano]

Hah! Gold star for noticing. Liszt in his Schubert transcriptions often used alternating octaves (a Lisztian invention). You are totally correct, but I think the effect almost exactly the same (and so much more comfortable in the hands). The idea came from my friend Anthony Newman, early keyboard music extraordinaire. But I have no defense against people who would condemn me!

[@fritzkuhne2055]

@@LivesOfThePiano the old masters like schubert would not have any problem with this, as they where all for innovation