Franz Schubert : Sonata in a minor , D 821
Allegro moderato 00:00
Adagio 09:44
Allegretto 13:39
In 1824, disappointed by the recent failure of his opera, Alfonso und Estrella (despite the fact that he considered it one of his finest works), Schubert returned to instrumental music on a smaller scale. As Bach had been stimulated by the recent invention of a five-string cello to emphasise the Sixth Suite’s position as the crowning glory of the set by writing in a higher register for the instrument than in the previous five suites, Schubert was clearly motivated by the arrival of the six-stringed arpeggione, a bowed instrument with the extended range and possibility of fast and accurate leaps and runs facilitated by its guitar-like stringing. It seems likely that Schubert typically wrote this sonata largely as a friendly gesture towards the instrument’s inventor, Vincenz Schuster .
The Arpeggione Sonata was written in 1824, soon after the Schöne Müllerin song cycle and shortly before the Great C major Symphony of 1825-28 and the C major String Quintet of 1827, perhaps his finest instrumental works. Melange of wiener knepien-kultur, volksmusik, russian fairy-tales, hungarian csardas , symphonic tone poem (the theme of the second movement is clearly derived from the Larghetto of Beethoven’s Second Symphony) , all ending with an entrancing wiegenlied. Arpeggione Sonata elevated instrumental program music to an aesthetic level that could be regarded as equivalent to, or higher than his own songs.
Recorded at Villa Delfini in Cavezzo (Modena) , august 6th, 2020
Guitars used for this recording:
Bernhard Kresse , after Johann Anton Stauffer (Pavel Steidl)
Gabriele Lodi , after René Lacôte (Edin Karamazov)
Open Reel Records - Sound recording and Film making by Marco Taio
Produced by Edin Karamazov & Pavel Steidl - © 2020