This is the very first music that I heard on Saturday, August 21, and it was glorious.
Schubert famously and tragically died young, at 31, possibly from complications arising from syphilis, yet in his short life he, like Mozart, and Chopin, and Mendelssohn, produced a phenomenal amount of work, not all of it complete, much of it sublimely beautiful, absorbing and endlessly fascinating. And so, one can say that the two sets of Impromptus, are Schubert’s most “mature” works.
The number 4 of this set, opens in A-flat minor, though it is written in the major, and the harmonic ambiguity lingers until bar 31, when the graceful, cascading sound is at last heard in A-flat major, beneath which the left hand has a fragile, ‘cello-like melody.
At the center of the piece is a lyrical trio reminscent of Schubert’s ‘Wanderer’ fantasy, after which the sense of tension from the earlier pieces is swept aside by the gradual acceleration of all the elements and the home key, A flat, becomes fully dominant.
Here is pianist Krystian Zimerman to play this amazing music for you:
