Schubert: Piano Sonatas, D. 537 And 664 / 'wanderer Fantasy'

Description

Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)Sonata in A Major, Op. 120, D. 664Sonata in A Minor, Op. 164, D. 537Fantasia in C Major, Op. 15, D. 760 (Wanderer Fantasia)Franz Schubert was born in Vienna in 1797, the son of a schoolmaster, whose path it seemed he might follow as an assistant teacher. His father had come to Vienna from his native Moravia to join his brother in the business, and reasons of domestic economy dictated that the sons of the family should follow the same calling. At home Schubert had some lessons in music from his father and from an older brother, followed by sound musical training and general education from the age of nine as a chorister of the imperial court chapel, a position that admitted him as a pupil of the Imperial and Royal Stadtkonvikt. His teachers here finally included Antonio Salieri and he profited from the particular friendship of a university student, Josef von Spaun, who had established a student orchestra that Schubert led and occasionally directed. Holidays from school allowed music-making in Schubert's own family and he played the viola in the family quartet, in which his father played the cello and two of his brothers first and second violin. By the age of thirteen Schubert was already writing music, including string quartets for performance at home and his first songs. His voice broke in 1812, but he remained a pupil of the Stadtkonvikt for another year, eventually rejecting an offered scholarship and further general education in favour of a career that allowed him more time for music. The needs of his family, however, made this dedication to composition immediately impossible, and in 1814 he embarked on a course as a primary school teacher. The following year he joined his father, although he showed no great aptitude for his new profession, which he was to practise intermittently, as need arose, for a year or so. The greater part of the remaining years of his life was devoted to music and to the company of his friends, poets, painters, musicians, members, largely, of the cultivated middle class of Vienna. In this respect his life differs markedly from that of Beethoven, who had come to Vienna with introductions to leading aristocratic patrons and who continued to enjoy their support through the vicissitudes of the first quarter of the new century.In the winter of 1816 Schubert moved into lodgings with his friend Franz von Schober, a young man of some means, who had persuaded Schubert to abandon teaching and devote himself to music. Nine months later he had rejoined his family, resuming his task as a teacher until the following summer, when more congenial employment offered as music-master to the two young daughters of Count Johann Esterházy at his Hungarian summer residence at Zseliz, a connection continued when the family returned to Vienna for the winter season and resumed less willingly in the summer of 1824. Throughout this period Schubert continued to compose music of all kinds. His songs in particular wo