Pianists Richard Egarr and Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya make their recording debut with a program of works for piano four-hands by Schubert.
Aside from being very enjoyable this repertoire features some of Schubert’s finest piano writing. It is worth noting that Schubert’s great F minor Fantasie, although justly famous, represents only a small proportion of his music for piano four-hands.
We hear this famous Fantasie into context with other lesser known works such as the wonderfully melodic early Sonata in B flat major, written when Schubert was 21, and the two contrasting Rondos: the Rondo in D major and the Rondo in A major.
Perhaps the star composition is the passionate Allegro in A minor, written a month after the Fantasie, and sometimes known by its posthumous title “Lebensstürme”; it gives us a clear picture of Schubert’s inner life: of a man who wrote the following:
‘Every night when I go to bed, I hope that I may never wake again, and every morning renews my grief.’
Here is the Schubert Fantasie in F- Minor:
