Franz Schubert Wuz Here
Solo Piano
About
Franz Schubert has figured prominently in Berman's repertoire since he worked with Leonard Shure at the New England Conservatory, first as his student and later as his final assistant. Mr. Shure was heir to the tradition of the great pianist Artur Schnabel and served as his only assistant. In 1991, Berman had the good fortune to play Schubert for audiences in Germany as the only American prizewinner of the Schubert International Competition in Dortmund.
On this page, you will find programs and program notes, reviews, and clips — a sampling from some programs Berman thinks of as modern Schubertiades, evenings that feature the music of Franz Schubert at its center. Schubert's music serves as the starting point and a jumping-off place for additional programming. His sonic world is especially compatible with Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, and Liszt, as well as with contemporary composers such as Ligeti, Rihm, and Diesendruck. Schubert's use of vernacular genres — dances, songs, horn calls — is not unlike the vivid scene paintings of Ives and other 20th-century composers. His sense of unfolding drama is cinematic, his pathos enduring.
Acclaim
“Schubert's D major Sonata was full of examples, in Mr. Berman's thrillingly clear performance. In its first movement, espe-cially, he showed very explicitly how the same idea keeps proceeding along different harmonic paths toward different goals, most of them illusory or in some way insufficient. The inner movements, too, were constant journeys, and the finale bounced with a folkmusic spirit Mr. Berman had found earlier in the evening in the works by Mr. Ligeti and Haydn.”
— Paul Griffiths, New York Times
“Berman studied Schubert’s Opus Posthumous Sonata in B-flat major with his teacher, the great pianist Leonard Shure, who had learned it from his teacher, Artur Schnabel, a revered Schubertian. So Berman’s analytic understanding of the music’s structure and content was thorough. Yet here most of all Berman showed himself to be a pianist attentive to he music of his own time, for he made this sonata, beloved for its melancholic lyricism, seem also like the daring music it is. The first movement’s sudden stops and abrupt harmonic shifts were stunningly done. The aching Andante was the more beautiful for Berman’s unsentimental way with it. The Scherzo was delicate but rhythmically inexorable. And the F-minor ouburst in the final movement was not just emotionally but musically disturbing.”
— Anthony Tommasini, Boston Globe
Programs
Merkin Hall
Franz Joseph Haydn
Sonata in A-flat Major, Hob. XVI:46 (1767–70)
Zoltán Kodály
Kilenc zongoradarab No. 2, op. 3 (1909)
György Ligeti
Étude No. 2, Cordes Vides (1985)
Zoltán Kodály
Kilenc Zongoradarab No. 3, op. 3 (1909)
György Ligeti
Étude No. 4, Fanfares (1985)
Tamar Diesendruck
Sound Reasoning in the Tower of Babel (1990)
Franz Schubert
Sonata in D Major, D. 850 (1825)
Merkin Concert Hall program notes | Merkin Concert Hall program
German Tour
J. S. Bach
Fantasia and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 904 (c. 1725)
György Ligeti
Selections from Études, Book 1 (1985)
Franz Schubert / Franz Liszt
From 12 Lieder von Franz Schubert (1838):
Liebesbotschaft
Gretchen am Spinnrade
Franz Liszt
Un Sospira, from Three Concert Études (1845–49)
Franz Schubert / Franz Liszt
Soirées de Vienne — Valse caprice No. 6, S. 427 (1846–52)
Franz Schubert
Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960 (1828)
Bargemusic
Franz Schubert
Moments Musicaux, D. 780 (1823–28)
Charles Ives
Four Transcriptions from Emerson (c. 1923–27)
Scott Wheeler
Flow Chart (1993)
Franz Schubert / Franz Liszt
From 12 Lieder von Franz Schubert (1838):
Liebesbotschaft
Gretchen am Spinnrade
Ständchen
Auf dem wasser zu singen
Franz Schubert's Moments Musicaux are deeply personal memoirs composed in the years leading up to his death. They recollect musical signatures — horn calls, country dances, chorales, character pieces — and hold them up like cherished mementos. Each begins poignantly with a gesture, then sustains its permanence, until quiescence. They are Schubert's frames of remembrance and, perhaps, of farewell. The final work of the set was initially published with the title Plaintes d'un Troubadour, a fitting sobriquet for an artist stricken of his strength.