Andrew Rangell - Schubert: Piano Works (2023)

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Andrew Rangell - Schubert: Piano Works (2023)

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For his latest Steinway & Sons release, pianist Andrew Rangell presents an intimate portrait of Franz Schubert; An album that includes the expansive Sonata in G major, D 894, the late Drei Klavierstucke, D 946 and a seldom heard little gem, Variation on a waltz by Diabelli, D 718.

On August 4, 2023, Steinway & Sons releases Schubert: Sonata, D 894; Diabelli Variation, D 718; Klavierstücke, D 946 / Andrew Rangell (STNS 30215). Long-time listeners to Andrew Rangell's many recordings will welcome his new Schubert recital with special interest. One of Mr. Rangell's most memorable recorded performances, now almost 20 years old, is the pianist's moving account of Schubert's B flat sonata and Moments Musicaux released by Bridge Records in 2004.

In his program notes for the present recording, Mr. Rangell writes that the Sonata in G major, D 894 was composed almost exactly two years prior to the completion of the composer's astonishing trilogy of final piano sonatas (C minor, A major, B flat major, D 958-960) in September 1828, two months before his death. Fully sharing their stature and emotional depth, the G major can properly be seen both as a harbinger and an equal of these later masterworks. The musicologist Alfred Einstein once memorably described this sonata as a work "shot through with the radiance of an eternally melancholy beauty". The young Robert Schumann thought it "Schubert's most perfect sonata in form and spirit". It seems also to have captured a special place in the affections of Schubert players, Richter and others having freely declared it to be their favorite sonata.

The Variation on a waltz theme by Anton Diabelli, D 718 came into existence when in 1819 publisher and composer Diabelli commissioned some 50 Austrian composers to contribute individual variations toward a projected festive publication. The long list included Carl Czerny, Czerny's precocious pupil Franz Liszt (age 8), Franz Xaver Mozart (son of W.A.) and even Archduke Rudolph! Beethoven evidently brushed off the invite initially, but on the rebound, so to say, provided a vast and stupefying set of 33 variations, a monument for the ages! (Published separately, of course.) Schubert's contribution, seldom heard, is a winsome and affecting waltz in C minor, beautifully complementing Diabelli's theme. They are here presented together.

The Drei Klavierstücke, D 946 waited 40 years to be first published (in 1868), Brahms himself the anonymous editor. Open to discussion is whether they may have been originally intended to form a set of impromptus, akin to D 899 and the seldom heard Variation on a waltz by Diabelli and D 935. It has been remarked that the present pieces seem closer, structurally speaking, to the earlier and more modest Moments Musicaux. The outer movements (in E flat minor and C major) feature contrasting trio sections in the remote keys of B major and D flat major, respectively. Schubert, in an autograph copy, deleted a second trio for the opening piece, a decision which seems to me justified in the larger context. The central E flat piece, much expanded by two contrasting trio sections, is perhaps the most popular, and has sometimes been performed alone. Judged to be less "important" than the famous sets of impromptus, the Drei Klavierstücke have nonetheless been performed and recorded (and loved) by a wide range of pianists over many decades.