Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Piano Sonatas Nos. 2, 3 and 6

In 1815 Franz Schubert committed his first piano sonatas to paper, starting a lifelong relationship with the form. A young seventeen-year-old composer set out to conquer the weighty heritage of the Viennese classics and to find his own musical language. Schubert appears here for the first time as a wanderer between worlds: the conscious struggle for his own musical legitimacy and his future intermediary rôle between the classical and the romantic, perhaps still unconsciously, as far as he was concerned, is now seen and heard. Surprisingly Schubert had already completed some string quartets and two symphonies, and had been able therefore to acquire experience in the so-called larger forms. The next due step in his development as a composer was to the piano sonata.

The particular charm in these early sonatas is often of an elusive character that reveals to the listener the composer’s