On the Spirit of Schubert

BBC Radio 3 have just completed another of their music marathons, where they concentrate on the output of one composer alone for a week, maybe more. Previously I have blogged about the 'Genius of Mozart', but now Franz Schubert has had his ten days in the spotlight, with 'The Spirit of Schubert' showing precisely why he is an ideal figure to put under the spotlight.

It bears repeating that Schubert seems to have lived several musical lives in one. His published catalogue by Otto Deutsch runs to nearly a thousand, and the mature examples could almost have been written by a 70-year old, not one who died at the tragically young age of 31 as Schubert did.

Perhaps Schubert's biggest contribution to classical music lies in the world of song, or 'Lied', to name it correctly – yet that is not the focus of this blog, for those works received great advocacy morning, noon and night on the radio. Nor will this piece focus on other hugely important canons such as the symphonies, the string quartets and the choral music – again, music bordering on the revolutionary. No, for me at least, the works making most impact over the ten days were those for piano.

Even within that illustrious list the stars were not the acknowledged mature masterworks, though the last three sonatas once again made their case for being the equal of any Beethoven wrote in the genre. No, the surprise elements were those 'middle' piano sonatas, not often performed in the concert hall, but revealed in the ten days as works possessing great emotion, invention and often humour.

They also showed Schubert's harmonic cunning. Never has a composer shown the aptitude for blurring the distinction between major and minor keys as much as him. A great example can be found not just in the piano sonatas but in the first of the 'Moments Musicaux', a strange utterance that daydreams in its opening melody in C major, but adds a darker afterthought in the minor key, unable to decide which one is the more conclusive. It's that sort of writing that kept Schubert as a composer capable of both darkness and light in the same sentence, leading sometimes to contradiction but often to incisive and balanced thought.

In the later works these thoughts become more outlandish and manic, perhaps nowhere more so than in the second movement of the penultimate piano sonata in A major D959. It helped that BBC Radio 3 had such distinguished pianists as Imogen Cooper and Paul Lewis to help illustrate these points in live events, but the studio recordings were equally well chosen, communicating just what a remarkable composer for the piano Schubert was. Those are the overwhelming memories I shall take with me from the ten day festival, following which I have visited a number of these works again. And who next for Radio 3? Might I suggest a trio of English composers who died in the same year, namely Elgar, Delius and Holst?

A Schubert Spotify playlist, with my highlights from a week's listening, can be found here: