LDV72

PHILIPPE CASSARD 13 One summer separates the composition of the two piano sonatas on this recording; and the first of them, D845 in A minor, completed in May 1825, truly is a musical winter, filled with icy gusts and sinister appeals for death – with the exception of its Andante poco moto. From June to the end of September that year, Schubert left Vienna to take long hikes through the Salzkammergut, and these great lungfuls of fresh air, energy and joy seem to have been wholly absorbed by the four movements of the Sonata D850 in D major, completed in August. In the manner of Beethoven, Schubert uses, at or soon after the beginning of these very dissimilar sonatas, the same rhythmic motif consisting of four quavers followed by a crotchet. But the incisive accent on the first note in the Sonata D845 is moved to the concluding crotchet in D850, and this is enough to change the motif’s character radically: on the one hand, an abrasive tone, with a conscious verticality; on the other, a perpetually regenerated motor rhythm.