Schubert: Piano Sonata No. 19 - Adagio

Schubert’s last three sonatas were completed in a flurry of activity between May and September 1828, and the first fair copies were made scant weeks before the composer’s death from typhoid. But these pieces are not ‘last works’ in the usual, grandiloquent sense. Audiences of Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise, written around the same time, might be forgiven for detecting a last message and a pretty clear intimation of fast-looming mortality about his late music – but the composer of Sonata No. 19 seems oblivious.
Oblivious, but not immune: pianist Aleksandar Madžar has given no little thought to the problem of presenting a work so inextricably bound up – by critics and hagiographers alike – with Schubert’s miserable, syphilitic end. He writes:
"Compared to its companions [the posthumous sonatas in A and B-flat], the Sonata in C minor is almost disappointingly ‘normal’ and well balanced. The first movement is a fairly clear and reasonable structure of impeccable proportions; it doesn’t replace a development with a hallucinatory intermezzo, and it doesn’t need 20 minutes to make its point. The Adagio seems to grow out of the second subject of the previous movement (probably a good idea in a large-scale structure!), and spares us the (unconvincing?) nervous breakdown present in the A-Major sonata. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite offer the sublime resolution of the slow movement of the B-flat, either. Still, this is a haunting, complex affair that, once again, is executed on exactly on the right scale. The Menuett is both brief and substantial, with more than just a whiff of Chopin about it, both in texture and harmony. The finale is often called a tarantella, but since most tarantellas are decorative or flippant (or both) we should probably try to fight this association. It deposits us very much in the galloping world of the ‘Erlkoenig’, and is probably the most striking feature of the whole sonata. In spite of its (enormous) dimensions, the clarity and balance of the entire structure is worthy of Mozart. Mix this with a musical content which is unambiguously one of passion, anguish, fever and battle, and you get a truly toxic mix, and one to relish."

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Music at Plush, sonata, Aleksandar Madzar, and 19