Steven Osborne & Paul Lewis

Schubert for house, garden and cooking purposes. Throughout his life, Franz Schubert worked more intensively than anyone before him on piano music for four hands. Only his songs exceeded his piano duets in number. A large number of Schubert's four-hand piano pieces consist of polonaises, folk dances and marches, not technically demanding pieces, which were intended for the domestic circle. Alongside these entertaining little works, Schubert also created large-scale pieces such as sonatas and fantasies, which are in no way inferior to his string quartets, symphonies and monumental piano sonatas. From his final years dates the Fantasy in F minor, D940, Schubert's infamous work for four-hand piano. He dedicated the Fantasy to the young Countess Caroline Esterházy, one of his piano students with whom he all too enthusiastically shared the piano stool! From the enchanting early bars, you recognise the melancholy and yearning, which many have interpreted as Schubert's pining for an unattainable love.