Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Piano Sonata in B flat major D 960

This is Schubert’s last sonata, his eighteenth. He composed it in the summer of 1828 along with two other ones, in C minor D. 958 and in A major D 959. Created in a single wave of inspiration, they are a peculiar whole usually referred to as „the last three sonatas.”
After that, Schubert only had time to write his final series of songs, those to the lyrics by Heine and Rellstab, published as Swan Song, a couple of emotional sacred pieces and his exceedingly spiritual work, the celebrated String Quintet in C major. He died in November the same year, thrown out of life at the age of 32, in his full creative ability.
He was not a professional pianist but, taught by his brother, he performed his own pieces and accompanied singers in concerts. Diarists have noted that “he had a beautiful stroke of a steady arm, lucid and expressive play, full of spirit and tenderness. The keyboard sang under his touch.”
∙ Molto moderato, B flat major. The endless singing comes out of silence and retreats into silence. It wanders through closer and farther keys. The melody flows and ebbs, once carrying on at a leisurely pace, once stopping at rests and fermatas. It seems to be listening in rapture to itself and its own echo.
∙ Andante sostenuto, C sharp minor. A different song, yet still a song, flows in mild and tender-sounding thirds over a restless ostinato of the left hand. The restlessness is especially audible in the recapitulation, when its rhythm seems to imitate Beethoven’s knocking on the door.
∙ Allegro vivace con delicatezza, B flat major. This scherzo, of a character and texture as if borrowed from a Mozart sonatina, is of childish naïveté.
∙ Allegro ma non troppo is composed in a nostalgic G minor. This landscape only seems so idyllic. Here, too, the narration wanders from key to key, from theme to theme. At times it stops, as if having lost its way. The sudden fortissima bring it back to reality.
Wilhelm Kempff, eminent Beethoven scholar but also interpreter of Schubert’s piano music, described his last sonatas as “monologues, confessions of a badly wounded soul” (1970).

Mieczysław Tomaszewski