Till Fellner

Schubert's importance as a lieder composer was never questioned. Several of his symphonies and chamber music pieces very soon became 'classics' too. His piano sonatas, however, were underrated for a long time. Even such composers as Schumann harboured the persistent opinion that Schubert was first and foremost a composer of smaller forms, such as lieder and the one-part piano piece, and that he was unable to sustain his genius in longer forms such as the sonata. It was not until the twentieth century that Schubert's sonatas were rediscovered by pianists such as Arthur Schnabel, Eduard Erdmann and, more recently, Alfred Brendel. As a result of their work, Schubert's sonatas were finally placed where they belong: alongside the great legacy of Beethoven. In particular the three last piano sonatas from 1828 belong in the same class as Beethoven's last sonatas. Just like Beethoven, but in his own way, Schubert manages to sublimate his personal expression into general human emotions. The dialectical struggle between contrasting themes that is so pronounced in Beethoven's work is absent from Schubert's. Instead, he lets his imagination roam freely and gives the themes ample time and room to develop, through ingenious harmonic explorations and subtle chiaroscuro effects.