Unser neuer Gesamtkatalog

For the second CD ardently desired by listeners after his brilliant 2006 debut, pianist Herbert Schuch thought up something which couldn’t be more original: Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonatas D 894 and 537 meet two works of important contemporary composer Helmut Lachenmann, who celebrated his 70th birthday two years ago. After all, Lachenmann’s Five Variations on a Theme by Franz Schubert (composed in 1956 and based on the German Dance in C-Sharp Minor D 643/1 from 1819) did nothing less than manifest the great significance of Schubert for contemporary music. As Lachenmann explains, this early work was primarily influenced by Arnold Schoenberg and the late works of Igor Stravinsky, although the dance-like character of Schubert’s original remains intact – “even if continually rephrased”. In contrast, the piano in Lachenmann’s Guero from 1970 becomes a percussion and plucked string instrument which even integrates the keys and tuning pegs. All of these effects are used in a highly artistic manner, however; as with Schubert, none are simply there for their own sake.

Schubert – Lachenmann

We come now to our favorites, the sonatas by Franz Schubert, whom many know only as a composer of Lieder, but of whom most hardly know the name.” – These are the opening words of Robert Schumann’s late review, published in 1835, referring to the only of Schubert’s piano sonatas published during the composer’s lifetime: A minor (D 845), D Major (D 850) and G Major (D 894). But Schubert’s instrumental compositions were published very late anyway: his String Quintet in C Major (D 956) did not appear until 1863; the “Unfinished” Symphony in B minor (D 759) even later, in 1867. Of Schubert’s 23 piano sonatas, some of which remained fragments, no less than a third were not published until the “Old Complete Edition” of 1888 and 1897.

After Schubert’s youthful attempts at writing works for piano four hands, he did not return to the piano sonata genre until relatively late in his life. The sonatas written between 1815 and 1819, some of which are extant in several versions and others of which are incomplete, document the composer’s search for new concepts and a definitive form of the multi-movement cycle within a complex historical backdrop. On the one hand, this musical tendency was present in other guises – represented in Vienna above all by Beethoven (after publication of the Hammerklaviersonata, op. 106, Schubert ceased work in this genre for several years). On the other, there was the aesthetic background as formulated in 1789 by Daniel Gottlob Türk in his widely circulated Piano Method which was felt to be authoritative: “Among all the pieces written for the piano, the sonata has rightly earned the first place. [...] As a result, this genre of instrumental work presumes a superb degree of enthusiasm, great power of imagination and a high, I almost want to say musical-poetical, momentum of thoughts and expression.”

The Sonata in A minor (D 537) was written in 1817 during the time that Schubert shared a residence with Franz von Schober and apparently had a suitable instrument to work on. His enthusiasm for the piano sonata can be seen in the rapidity with which he completed six works, which may even have been conceived as a collection – an old custom which was nonetheless dying out at the beginning of the 19th century. The numbers Schubert gave these works, however, are not continuous, and leave us in some confusion. Much of the sound and composition that seems so characteristic for Schubert’s later sonatas can be found in this work: the disturbing disruption of melodic lines, the at times sharp harmonic outbreaks, the deceptive lightness of the melancholy as well as a structure that differentiates between the cantabile upper voice (often in octaves) and the accompanying left hand. It may thus be no coincidence that eleven years later, Schubert reused the wonderful, quiescent theme of the second movement in the finale of his Piano Sonata in A Major (D 959).

Later as well, Schubert tried on many other occasions to combine sonatas to cycles. The trilogy from the last months of his life (D 958, D 959 and D 960) are a successful example of this, but also the works from 1825/26 show his ambition to build larger units. In the manuscript, he thus designated the Sonata in G Major (D 894), composed in October 1826, as the IV. Sonata. In print, however, the work appeared under the title Fantasie, Andante, Menuetto und Allegretto op. 78, its unusual name according to individual movements being indebted to the nearly timeless first movement, which seems to exist in a world of its own and to be constructed of tonal surfaces. The closing Rondo, in which the tone repetitions from the rustic Scherzo return, only appears to be light-hearted; shades of gray come to cloud the music. After hearing the work at its premiere in the apartment of Josef von Spaun, Franz von Hartmann writes in a diary entry from December 8, 1826: “Then came Schubert and played a wonderful but melancholy composition from his own pen.”

The path-breaking potential in Schubert’s music can be seen in the numerous compositional reflections which originated above all in the second half of the 20th century. These include the Five Variations on a Theme by Schubert (1956) by Helmut Lachenmann – an early work written on the only 16-bar long German Dance in C# minor (D 643/1) from 1819. The variations are particularly attractive because they remain faithful to the playful elements and dancelike character of the theme, despite being written in the techniques of Schoenberg and late Stravinsky. “Resistance to tradition is not yet pronounced here, insofar as its categories as ruling conventions are subject to the previously mentioned bourgeois mechanisms of repression” (Helmut Lachenmann, 1989). The composition of the graphically notated piece Guero (1969) goes back to a suggestion of pianist Alfons Kontarsky, when he was putting together a collection of short piano works based on new performance techniques. For this piece, Lachenmann transformed the grand piano, as a requisite of bourgeois culture, into a buzzing, clattering, Latin American rhythm instrument. The sounds created on the keys, pegs and strings are not only a challenge for the pianist, but are also meant to be “a study for the listener”.