Fantasy in F minor for piano four hands

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Franz Schubert 1827 (portrayed by Anton Depauly , 1828)
Caroline von Esterházy

The Fantasy in F minor for piano four hands by Franz Schubert , D 940 ( Op. Posth. 103) is one of Schubert's most important compositions for several pianists and one of his most important piano compositions in general. Schubert composed the work in 1828, the last year of his life, and dedicated it to his pupil, Karoline von Esterházy , with whom Schubert was secretly in love.

History

Schubert began recording the Fantasy in Vienna in January 1828 . The work was completed in March of the same year and premiered in May . Schubert's friend Eduard von Bauernfeld noted in his diary on May 9th that Franz Schubert and Franz Lachner had performed a remarkable piano duet .

Schubert died in November of that year. After his death, his friends and family had a number of his works printed, including this one. It was published by Anton Diabelli . The original manuscript is archived in the Austrian State Archives .

construction

Complete recording of the fantasy, Latsos Duo (17:17 min., 2019)
Audio recording of the combined 1st and 4th movements of the Fantasy, Awadagin Pratt and Lucy Hattemer (7:44 min., 2009)

The fantasy consists of four movements which are thematically linked and played through without interruption. The playing time is about 20 minutes.

The sentences are:

  1. Allegro molto moderato
  2. largo
  3. Scherzo. Allegro vivace
  4. Final. Allegro molto moderato

An analogous basic structure with four interconnected movements also has Schubert's Opus 15 (D. 760) in C major, known as the Wanderer Fantasy , which stylistically bridges the traditional sonata form and the form of a free tone poem . The structure of the two fantasies is very similar: Allegro, slow, scherzo, allegro with fugue . as they later u. a. Franz Liszt wrote. The form of Schubert's F minor fantasy, with its relatively rigid structure (stricter, for example, than the piano fantasies of Ludwig van Beethoven or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ), influenced Liszt's compositions.

One page of the original Schubert manuscript

First sentence

The piece begins with a lyrical melody with dotted rhythms reminiscent of the Hungarian style. The theme is finally converted from F minor to F major, repeated briefly in F major, and then moves on to a serious second theme before being converted to F sharp minor in preparation for the second movement .

Second sentence

The second movement begins with an energetic, somewhat turbulent fortissimo theme in F sharp minor. Although overwritten with “slow and wide” ( largo ), this often double-dotted first theme gives the sentence a lot of tension. Eventually the first theme gives way to a calm and lyrical second theme. The first theme is repeated and ends in a C sharp major dominant figure. Schubert had recently heard Paganini's Violin Concerto No. 2 , the second movement of which inspired his themes.

Third sentence

Immediately following the lively F sharp minor theme, the scherzo is followed by a bright, lively third movement in the same clef. As in one of his piano trios , the scherzo first apparently returns to F sharp minor, but then ends, with the repetition, with a transition from A major to F sharp minor, and finally ends in C sharp octaves, which leads to F minor of the finale, with which the starting key is restored.

final

The finale is in the same key as the first movement, so it makes sense to combine the first and fourth movements (see ↑ Audio ): The final movement begins with a repetition of the main theme of the first movement, both in F minor and in F minor in F major, followed by a fugue on its secondary theme. The fugue climbs to a culmination point before ending abruptly on a C major dominant chord rather than resolving to either F major or F minor. After a bar of silence, the first theme is briefly repeated, after which final chords quickly develop that echo the second theme again, before the composition ends with eight calm final bars. Frisch speaks of the "most remarkable cadenza in Schubert's entire work" because he manages to unite the two opposing themes of the fantasy in the eight final bars.

Discography

Countless recordings, including:

literature

  • Franz Schubert: Works for Piano Four Hands , Volume III. Editor Willi Kahl. G. Henle Verlag, Munich, OCLC 3681881.
  • Alfred Einstein : Schubert: A Musical Portrait . Oxford University Press , New York 1951, OCLC 602553 .
  • Dallas A Weekly, Arganbright: Schubert's Music for Piano Four-Hands . Pro / Am Music Resources Inc, White Plains 1990, ISBN 978-0-912483-55-9 .
  • Walter Frisch (ed.): Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies . University of Nebraska Press, 1986, ISBN 978-0-8032-6892-0 .
  • Christopher Howard Gibbs: The Life of Schubert . Cambridge University Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-521-59512-4 .
  • R. Larry Todd: Nineteenth-century piano music . Taylor & Francis, 2004, ISBN 978-0-415-96890-4 .
  • Brian Newbould: Schubert studies . Ashgate, 1998, ISBN 978-1-85928-253-3 .
  • Elizabeth Norman McKay: Schubert's string and piano duos in context . In: Brian Newbould: Schubert studies . Ashgate, 1998, pp. 62-111.

Web links

Commons : D 940 - Fantasia in F minor for piano four-hands  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Videos

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gibbs , pp. 150-151.
  2. ↑ a b Weekly , p. 71.
  3. ↑ a b Weekly , p. 72.
  4. ↑ Frisch , p. 75.
  5. ↑ Gibbs , pp. 161-162.
  6. ↑ a b Einstein , p. 281.
  7. ↑ a b c d Henle Collection
  8. ↑ Frisch , pp. 78-79.