About
"I love the vulnerability of Schubert," Paul Lewis has said. "I love the fragility. I love the lack of resolution. In a way, it's the most real and human music". It is tempting to think of Schubert's music as wrought from a world of worries, (nowhere more so than in Winterreise, which makes for a fascinating partner concert six days after this).
But these three sonatas display Schubert's sunnier side. The storm and stress of the first music we hear today is almost forgotten as the sonata scampers to an ebullient conclusion and the imposing grandeur of the B major sonata's opening gives way to an almost folksy demeanour in bucolic triple time dances. Most confounding of all is the wonderfully tranquil late G major sonata written when Schubert had just over a year of life left. It's music of such transparency and delicacy that it seems to be breathing lighter air. Real, human, and profound.