Trio 1/2013

entire song oeuvre: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. And, on the other hand, as part of the poetic conception of the programme, the two piano sonatas performed in the concert (the Sonata in A minor of 1823 and the Sonata in G major) were illustrative of the struggle that Schubert underwent between 1823 and 1826. These sonatas also served as a frame for the important settings of the Gesänge aus Wilhelm Meister or Lieder der Mignon on poems by Goethe. As with the previous two, the recital was given on the fortepiano.

The fifth and final concert, 1828 – The Final Year, featured Schubert’s last three piano sonatas (the sonatas in C minor, A major and B-flat major), the monumental trilogy that Schubert finished in September 1828, just two months before his death.

These works are Schubert’s last works in the genre and represent one of the peaks of Schubert’s oeuvre and, indeed, of Western music.

Each concert was supported by and documented with extensive programme notes providing a historical and musical context to the works presented; whilst also serving as a complement to my doctoral thesis on Schubert’s unfinished piano sonatas.

I have compiled all these texts in a book entitled An die Musik. Doctoral Concert Series. Programme Notes, which is at the library of the Sibelius Academy and can also be seen online at http://ethesis.siba.fi _____ My doctoral thesis bears the title The Unfinished Piano Sonatas of Franz Schubert, and I consider it a natural counterpart to the doctoral concert series, which presented all of his completed sonatas. The text offers a thorough study intended for musiclovers and professional musicians alike, and it deals with Schubert’s incomplete sonatas for solo piano as seen from the point of view of a performer. Covering most of his creative career, these works represent nothing less than half of all of Schubert’s output in the genre, and they show the evolution of his music for piano in an enlightening manner.

In this study, Schubert’s incomplete piano sonatas are presented sequentially, as they were written, at the same time considering the context that Schubert’s life and his work in other genres could provide. The text does not especially focus on the unfinished nature of these works, but rather on the music they contain. The sonatas are analyzed individually and in chronological order, mainly from a stylistic and formal point of view, but also in an attempt to show, through these incomplete pieces, the development of Schubert’s music as a whole.

The conclusions of this study are mainly the following: I believe that, to a great extent, the genre of the piano sonata was an experimental arena for Schubert. His sonatas for piano, especially the ones he wrote in his early 99