SCHUBERT: Late Piano Works, Vol. II = Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-flat Major, D. 960; 3 Klavierstücke, D. 946 – Andrea Lucchesini, piano – Audite 97.766, 78:48 (1/17/20) [Distr. by Naxos] *****:
For the second volume of late Schubert works, Andrea Lucchesini (b. 1965) addresses the mighty B-flat Sonata and the three posthumous pieces, all from 1828. Recorded 10-13 November 2018, this recital has Lucchesini’s Steinway D in luminous resonance, courtesy of Producer Ludger Boeckenhoff.
It seems cruel and ironic that this great Sonata in B-flat Major did not receive publication until 1838, some ten years after Schubert’s death. What we consider the “heavenly length” of the last sonatas met only resentment and dismissal from musicians and scholars until Artur Schnabel validated their worth another hundred years later, in the 1930s. For this imposing work, Schubert took as his model the four-movement pattern Beethoven had established in his Op. 7 Sonata in E-flat and the Op. 10, No. 3 Sonata in D Major, whose last movements move in sonata-form.
Lucchesini allows the first movement Molto moderato considerable breadth, much as Sviatoslav Richter had in his various, percussive renditions. But Lucchesini’s approach proves softer, more lyrical, despite the occasional eruption in the movement’s sad momentum that pines for loss, exacerbated by the G-flat trills that bear intimations of mortality. Lucchesini holds the three main thematic groups together, those in B-flat, F-sharp Minor, and F Minor; and I must confess to feeling particularly moved with his shift into C-sharp Minor for the development section and the low G-flat trill as he enters the recapitulation. Lucchesini’s pearly play has consistently bestowed a level of poetic content in this performance that ought to be savored.
Franz Schubert,
by Wilhelm August Rieder
The heart of the piece, the Andante sostenuto in C-sharp Minor, receives from Lucchesini exemplary, arioso treatment, and he maintains a vigorous line that alerts us to its A-B-A structure. The middle section in A Major sings in the manner of a chorale with a solemn bass line. The color elements Lucchesini brings out, sostenuto, remind us of Schubert’s occasional use of Neapolitan harmony. The consoling Scherzo, marked Allegro vivace con delicatezza, demands ambivalent syncopation of three against two, while the harmony plays enharmonic puns with the relationship of G-flat (from the trill in movement one) and its enharmonic character as F-sharp. The brief Trio exploits off-beat accepts with a kind of ingenuous glee. The finale, Allegro, ma non troppo, presents another, large sonata-form in three thematic groups, of which the third, in F Minor, erupts in huge chords, ff. The first, rather martial period, posits the tension Schubert establishes between the home key of B-flat and creates an urge to its relative G Minor. Most disarming, a second motif in F Major has Lucchesini’s demonstrating his light touch as left hand syncopes compete with right hand arpeggios. The real drama occurs late, both in the Presto coda and in the sudden pause that interrupts the flow before the rush to judgment. The loving unity of effect, a guiding principle for Edgar Allan Poe’s vison of poetry, has guided every bar of Lucchesini’’s performance.
The same year 1828 saw Schubert’s working on the three pieces often construed as abbreviated sonata movements or elaborate examples of Impromptus. They appeared in print, courtesy of editor Johannes Brahms, in 1868. The first (rondo) in Allegro assai in E-flat Minor, offers an extended Andantino section of some 165 measures Schubert excised and Brahms replaced. Lucchesini plays the restored version – and with a percussive fire in the outer sections we had not heard in the Sonata. The second of the Klavierstücke, a five-part Allegretto in E-flat Major – which like the first has two trios – sets an opening and outer, dreamy idyll against an interior, tumultuous sensibility close to the Winterreise song cycle. The last of the set, Allegro, provides us a final rondo, this in C Major. Lucchesini plays it for its dire contrasts in tone, jubilant excitement versus a quasi-religious meditation. Its middle section has Lucchesini’s playing staggered chords that provide a semblance of a scherzo’s freedom from wringing emotions.
—Gary Lemco
