Utwory na płycie:

• Schubert: 4 Impromptus, D. 935 - #1 In F Minor: Allegro Moderato
• Schubert: 4 Impromptus, D. 935 - #2 In A Flat: Allegretto
• Schubert: 4 Impromptus, D. 935 - #3 In B Flat: Andante
• Schubert: 4 Impromptus, D. 935 - #4 In F Minor: Scherzando
• Schubert: 3 Piano Pieces, D. 946 - #1 In E Flat Minor: Allegro Assai
• Schubert: 3 Piano Pieces, D. 946 - #2 In E Flat: Allegretto
• Schubert: 3 Piano Pieces, D. 946 - #3 In C: Allegro
• Schubert: Variations On A Theme By Anselm Hüttenbrenner, D. 576

Four Impromptus D935 Op 142
Three piano pieces D946
Variations on a theme by Anselm Hüttenbrenner D576

In the spring of 1826 the first two of Schubert’s piano sonatas to appear in print were issued in Vienna: the firm of Anton Pennauer brought out the big A minor Sonata, D845, and Artaria & Co the D major, D850. Spurred on by this success, Schubert wrote to two Leipzig publishers Heinrich Albert Probst, and Breitkopf & Härtel some four months later. Addressing himself in the same terms to both, he offered his Octet, D803, as well as some songs, string quartets, piano sonatas and pieces for four hands. The responses were not encouraging. Probst pointed out that Schubert’s somewhat recondite style was not yet appreciated by the German public, and asked him to take that into account when submitting his manuscripts. Suitable items, Probst suggested, would be a selection of songs, and some piano pieces for two and four hands which were not too difficult to play or understand. Breitkopf’s reaction was much the same: since they had no idea if Schubert’s music had met with any commercial success, they invited him to send them some solo piano pieces or duets.

It may have been his lack of success in finding an outlet for his large-scale instrumental works that led Schubert to turn his attention in the following year to composing more readily marketable piano pieces. The early weeks of 1827 were occupied with Winterreise: Schubert set the first twelve of Wilhelm Müller’s poems in February, but the remainder did not follow until the autumn. Between the two halves of the bleak song cycle came four of the Moments musicaux, D780 (the two additional pieces making up the series were earlier compositions), and the first set of Impromptus. By the end of the year, the second series of Impromptus was also ready.

The title of ‘Impromptu’ was not initially Schubert’s own: it was the Viennese publisher Tobias Haslinger who labelled the first two pieces from Schubert’s first set, D899, as such when he issued them in December 1827. Haslinger may have had in mind the Impromptus of the Bohemian composer Jan Václav Voříšek which had become popular in the early 1820s. Schubert must have known Voříšek’s pieces, and he was happy enough to use the same title when he composed his second set, D935, which he offered to the Mainz firm of Schott & Co in February 1828 as ‘Four Impromptus which can appear singly or all four together’. Schott, however, declined to publish them, and they did not appear in print until more than ten years after Schubert’s death, when Anton Diabelli issued them with a dedication to Liszt.

It was Schumann who confidently asserted that Schubert’s second set of Impromptus was really a sonata in disguise. ‘The first [piece] is so obviously the first movement of a sonata, so completely worked out and self-contained’, declared Schumann, ‘that there can be no doubt about it.’ It is true that the first and last of the pieces are in the same key of F minor, but neither is in sonata form; and while Beethoven managed to write a four-movement sonata entirely bereft of sonata form (Op 26), it would hardly have been a characteristic procedure for Schubert.

Schubert’s opening piece is conceived on a broad scale, and it contains a wealth of inspired material. The jagged opening theme is followed by a passage of gently rippling semiquavers whose thematic outline eventually gives rise to a wonderfully expressive melody in repeated chords. There is also a contrasting episode that has the pianist’s left hand, playing the melody, constantly crossing back and forth over the right. Despite the fact that it unfolds for the most part pianissimo, Schubert clearly wanted this passage played with peculiar intensity: the marking of appassionato for such intimate music is a characteristic gesture, and one we find again in a similar context in the slow movement of the E flat major piano trio, D929, and the ‘Notturno’ for piano trio, D897.

The second of the D935 Impromptus is similar in form and mood to the last of the six Moments musicaux, in the same key of A flat major both are essentially a minuet and trio in Allegretto tempo; while the third Impromptu is a famous set of variations on a theme that recalls the melody Schubert borrowed from his incidental music to the play Rosamunde when he came to write the slow movement of his A minor string quartet, D804. Of the five variations, the third is an agitated piece in the minor, and the fourth broadens the tonal horizons of the piece by moving into the warmth of G flat major. The final variation is a delicate display piece, but Schubert characteristically brings proceedings to an end with a coda that is at once slower and simpler than the theme itself.