Luogo e data di registrazione		Lutherse Church, Haarlem (The Netherlands) - 2/5 July 1997
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Recording supervisor		Wolf Erichson
	Recording Engineer		Stephan Schellmann (Tritonus)
	Prima Edizione LP		-
	Prima Edizione CD		Sony / Vivarte - SK 63 361 - (1 CD) - durata 69' 59" - (p) 1998 - DDD
	Cover Art		Die Forelle First page of the edition, Berlin, ca. 1860
	Note		-

Schubert: Chamber Music with Piano As in painting fruits and flowers - the everlasting depicted in the, alas, transitory - so is the music of Schubert. In a major key the mood is rarely entirely joyous and in the minor, apart from a sudden upsurge of rebellion, his music is of a soothing sweetness. Schubert is the man on the way to the gallows, unable to stop telling his friends how incomparably beautiful life is - and how simple. A blissful moment in music is a shocking experience; it is a universal feeling in a world of constant compromise. A universal feeling - and unforgettable, too. A remembrance: With my father at a concert when I am about eight years old. Of course, my father has to leave me on my own: he is a member of the orchestra. The “Unflnished” Symphony of Schubert is being played, and when the clarinet-solo comes in the second movement I realize, I am all of a sudden sure: “This is the most beautiful thing in the world!” My reader may have had similar experiences with the music of Schubert. Anner Bylsma Franz Schubert: Chamber Music with Piano In the early summer of 1819, Schubert and his friend the singer Johann Michael Vogl left Vienna for a trip to Upper Austria. First they visited the Benedictine monastery of Kremsmünster and then went to Vogl's birthplace, Steyr - an ancient town lying on the confluence of two rivers. They found lodging at the home of an acquaintance, Sylvester Paumgartner, and were soon surrounded by musical friends. Schubert was happier than he had been for a long time. On July 13 he wrote from Steyr to his brother Ferdinand: “I find myself in good spirits here, even if the weather is not very nice...  In the house where I am living, there are eight girls, almost all pretty. You can see that I have my work cut out for me. The daughter of Herr v. K. [oller], at whose house Vogl and I lunch every day, is very pretty, plays the piano nicely and is going to sing various songs of mine...  The country around Steyr is indescribably beautiful.” In another letter, dated Linz, August 19, 1819, which Schubert wrote to his friend Johann Mayrhofer, he notes,“In Steyr I had, and will continue to have, a marvelous time. The country is heavenly; it's also very beautiful round Linz.” It was in these happy surroundings at Steyr that Schubert wrote one of his most popular pieces, the Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667, published posthumously as Op. Posth. 114. It later became known as the Forellen [Trout] Quintet because the theme of the fourth movement is the song Die Forelle (D. 550), which Schubert wrote in five versions between the end of 1816 and the summer of 1817. Schubert's host, in whose house the first performance took place towards the end of 1819, was an amateur cellist. It was ten years before the work was printed in Vienna (spring 1829). According to the evidence of Albert Stadler, who copied the parts for the dedicatee Paumgartner, Schubert took, as a model for the Trout Quintet, a wellknown piano quintet by Johann Nepomuk Hummel (Op. 87, first published in 1822 but composed, as the dated autograph in the British Library shows, in 1802 and circulated in manuscript copies throughout Vienna in the next twenty years). The piano quintet was a relatively unknown form - the popular ensemble with piano and strings was the trio - and, less widely used, the quartet. Schubert's Quintet has proved to be one of the best-loved chamber music pieces of all time, to which its optimistic, sunlit language has undoubtedly contributed. Those familiar with Beethoven's piano writing in the first decade of the nineteenth century will notice that Schubert's piano writing is remarkably different. Both, of course, benefited from the new and more solid mechanical construction of the pianoforte, in particular its permanent expansion from five to six, and even six-and-a-half, octaves. Another feature of extreme importance was the increased solidity and hence the stronger top (treble), which had tended to go out of tune rapidly in the older instruments. The period of the Trout Quintet saw a gready increased interest on Schubert's part in instrumental music in general, and in piano music in particular. On the whole (and this is especially true for the Trout Quintet) the piano's texture is lighter than that of Beethoven's and there is less tendency to have (as Beethoven often does) great spread between top and bottom - as in the lead-back into the recapitulation in the First movement of the Pathétíque Sonata - and an altogether heavier texture. The very opening of the Trout Quintet, with its fleeting, light-footed piano entry, shows the difference at once. It is true that, in the period from 1817 to 1820, we have fifty lieder from Schubert's fertile pen, but also seven piano sonatas as well as single movements and duets for the instrument. Coupled with this marked interest in the new pianoforte, we may also trace a certain melancholy in the composer's language, which in our Quintet finds its expression in the Andante movement - a dark shading that will become part of Schubert's music from now on: finis origine pendet. The Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano was composed in November 1824 for what a recent dictionary describes as an “Arpeggione - a six-stringed instrument invented by Staufer of Vienna in 1823; a hybrid between a cello and a guitar, played with a bow and with a fretted fingerboard.” On this recording, Anner Bylsma plays the arpeggione part on a five-string violoncello piccolo. The arpeggione was in many respects a stillborn instrument, and is now almost totally obsolete. It used to be maintained that the autograph manuscript, now in the library of the Paris Conservatoire, was written, at least according to Eusebius Mandyczewski, “in a careless manner, which shows Schubert's lack of affection for the work.” But speed, as shown by hasty writing, can be seen on countless manuscripts by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven and certainly does not provide evidence of “lack of affection.” It probably simply indicated that the composer - in this case, Schubert with the Arpeggione Sonata - was, as usual, pressed for time. On the contrary, this is a sophisticated piece and a distinct addition to the composer's corpus of late chamber music. Of course, it was a commission, but then, so were most of the late works by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven as well as by Schubert himself. Like many minor-keyed pieces by Haydn, the Arpeggione Sonata begins in the minor key but ends in the major, and the folk-tune atmosphere of the Allegretto finale reminds us of Haydn, too. The single-movement Adagio for piano trio in E flat major was apparently composed in the year 1827 - possibly, thought the great Schubert scholar Otto Erich Deutsch, as the second or third movement of an intended trio. Its ethereal, slightly otherworldly atmosphere has certain similarities to other chamber music of Schubert`s last years - for example, the great B flat major Trio, Op. 99, composed at about the same time. This fragment - not published until 1845 - used to be entitled “Notturno” but there is no such designation in the autograph manuscript (in the Austrian National Library,Vienna), even though this title aptly describes the fundamental mood of this composition. © 1998 H. C. Robbins Landon