SCHUBERT PIANO SONATA D.959 – ARCADI VOLODOS

The Russian pianist Arcadi Volodos returns to record music by Schubert (1797-1828) after the great success he achieved 17 years ago. The new album includes the powerful “Piano Sonata No. 20 D 959”, a piece he no longer plays live, and is completed with a series of minuets by Schubert himself (D334, D335 and D600). 

All the intensity of the work is clearly focused in the second movement, an Andantino in F sharp minor. He made it the main center, the raison d’être of the entire composition. He continues with an ethereal scherzo and ends with a controlled and eloquent allegretto. But already in the initial allegro something had happened. Volodos approaches that initial allegro with the exquisiteness of chamber music. The hands of the old keyboard master, his famous pyrotechnic virtuosism are astonishingly exposed. 

Here Schubert deceives us. And he chooses an unexpected theme for his musical display. A brief motif barely outlined at the end of the exhibition. The melody aspires to become a song, in the right hand, with the typical accompaniment of a lied, in the left. He strives to add light to it, and even he chooses to place it in the lowest and darkest register of the instrument. But suddenly Volodos shows us the solution. And we hear it heading towards a surprising punchline, in the shape of a ninth chord. A melancholic tune in C minor that, in his hands, moves us to tears. Schubert repeats it with the same result, but now from the key of A minor.  

After such riches, the inclusion of another sonata would have unfavorable the three more rarely performed Minuets that complete the recording are elegant and reveal the Schubert’s transformation from his youth years to his matured self. A pleasing makeweight but in no sense negligible. They are mostly slowly and sensitively played here, as if to emphasize their affinity with the preceding sonata; however, the opulent pace of the opening and conclusion of D.600 is pure Bach. 
 
This CD will surely be included in the collection of every devotee of Schubert’s piano music.