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‘When things are made too easy, spirituality is lost’ Zachary Carretín and Mina Gajić bring historical instruments to Schubert sonatas on ‘BOUNDLESS’
by Caitlin Rockett
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ome years ago, pianist Mina Gajić found herself at Maison Erard in Amsterdam, staring at a teal 1835 Erard grand piano. She was enamored with the French-made instrument, but it wasn’t for sale. “It was a very long conversation to bring that piano back to the States,” Gajić says. “Because of its unique appearance, that piano was supposed to be the one [shop owner] Fritz [Janmaat] would keep as a crown jewel of his career,” which, among other notable projects, included restoring a piano played by Franz Listz. Gajić decided that her time in Amsterdam “would be spent with this piano.” “No sightseeing, just sitting at this piano and playing, playing, playing,” she says. “Finally [Janmaat] came out of his workshop and said, ‘You and this piano APRIL 2, 2020
belong together.’” Today, accompanied by her husband, violinist Zachary Carretín, you can hear Gajić play sonatas by Franz Schubert on this rare Erard piano on their new album, BOUNDLESS, released on March 27. These sonatas (often called sonatinas for their diminutive length), composed specifically for violin and piano, were written between March 1816 and August 1817, when Schubert was only 20 years old, though they wouldn’t be released until several years after his I
death, in 1936. The young composer was a trailblazer of Romantic era music, creating expressive harmonies and melodies that conveyed the joyous intellectual and artistic growth European society was enjoying at the time. Carretín points out that Lord Byron wrote Manfred — a dramatic exploration of human responsibility — during the same years Schubert composed
these sonatas. “You find this humanism and selfexploration and looking inward into the nature of consciousness, and this is really the beginning of Romanticism,” Carretín says. “These pieces are so interesting because they’re right at the cusp of the very refined Classical era and the beginning of this raw Romanticism. “The first sonatina is an homage to classical style. The second is Schubert BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE
