Franz Peter Schubert never owned a piano in his lifetime.
FRANZ SCHUBERT PIANO WORKS
→ SONATAS and OTHER SOLO PIANO WORKS ←
It has taken many years of slowly growing acceptance for Schubert's solo piano works, other than the impromptus and momens musicaux to become part of the standard repertoire. More than in any other genre, we can see his struggles in the middle years from the number of incomplete works, but, just before the end, it all came together in the last 3 sonatas.
→ PIANO DANCES ←
A very neglected area of Schubert's output. Schubert would regularly improvise dances on the piano, and those that he particularly liked he would repeat a few times to fix in his memory, so he could write them down. Many are just 16 bars. Around 400 dances of various types; waltzes, ländler, écossaises, galopps, cotillons, deutcher and minuets have survived. Few are well known, many are delightful, and recordings are rare.
→ PIANO DUETS ←
Schubert produced piano duets throughout his composing career, indeed the first surviving work, D1, is a piano duet. At the time it was the accepted medium for making major works accessible to the public, with many symphonies and overtures being transcribed for duet play. As piano duets are now out of fashion, these works are not as well known as they deserve to be - although many are light, there are some substantial works here, notably the Fantasy in F minor, D940, and the 'Grand Duo' Sonata, D812, which Schumann was convinced is really a symphony, and which has been orchestrated several times, initially by Joachim, and more recently by Raymond Leppard.
" No one understands another's grief,
no one understands another's joy....
My music is the product of my talent and my misery.
And that which I have written in my greatest distress
is what the world seems to like best. "
→ Franz Peter Schubert (1824) ←
S o n a t a D . 9 5 9 A n d a n t i n o
M o r e V i d e o s
" Our pianists scarcely realise what a glorious treasure they can find in Schubert's piano compositions ... "