Christine Vanderkooy | Schubert: Late Piano Works

From Christine Vanderkooy: I do not know what it is like to face death, except that to be human is to know that each day is a gift, with an unknown number of days before us.  Franz Schubert was composing feverishly in the months before illness ended his life in the Fall of 1828, completing some of his most sophisticated, poetic, and deeply felt works for the piano, including the Piano Sonata in C minor, D. 958—the first from his late sonata trilogy—and Drei Klavierstücke, D. 946, his final set of impromptus.   

Amidst the conjecture surrounding Schubert’s final months we may not be able to surmise definitively whether these late compositions were deeply impacted by a retrospective view of life or the anticipation of death, but his writing belies a rapidly maturing artist, perhaps owing to a growing self-possession following the death of his admired Beethoven less than a year earlier.  Schubert’s meticulously crafted work, deep regard for structure, and masterful use of colour serve to gorgeously permeate the deepest layers of the soul, revealing lingering glimpses into worlds unspoken, moving us, sometimes with the masterful shift of just one note or rest, from the desolate to the sublime.