Rondo, Piano and Violin, B Minor, D. 895 (1826)
FRANZ PETER SCHUBERT
Born 31 January 1797, Vienna, Austria.
Died 19 November 1828, Vienna, Austria.
Schubert began producing really excellent songs as early as 1814, and then undoubted masterworks of instrumental writing from 1821 on; by 1828, when the Rondo achieved its definitive form, he was composing nothing but monsterpieces! Every work between D. 880 and D. 965, the last composition of his mere thirty-one years of life, is as long, ambitious, complex, rich, substantial, and hyper-expressive as he can make it. To those who admire this repertory, each movement, built to be far longer than those of Haydn, Mozart, or even Beethoven, exemplifies what they call Schubert’s ‘heavenly length.’ To his detractors, these pieces seem repetitive, boring, pretentious, and not even tolerable when what they term “judicious cuts’ are made. Only in the last two- score years has the upper hand shifted to the admirers; before that, the late works often got played in cruelly shortened versions.
This Rondo, published as Rondo brilliant, as well as the slightly later Fantasia in C Major, op. 159, D. 934, Schubert’s other sunset essay for the violin-piano combination, did not have to be cut, because they hardly ever got performed. The virtuoso community attached pariah status to these two works as endlessly long, fussily composed, demanding on both players’ technical capacity beyond the rewards provided, difficult to keep in tune, and lacking in memorable tunes or enough really showy passages of the kind that make players look flashy. These views may sound silly today, but in 1940 this did represent the prevailing opinion, and it faded very, very slowly and reluctantly.
Most rondo-form movements opt for a bouncy, light quality throughout. This one, on the contrary, tries to attain a high degree of seriousness from the very outset of the slow introductory section. The exaggerated long-short contrast figure that begins the work, and the breathtaking violin scales that answer it, tell of motivic ideas with hard edges, cold sides, and no nonsense. Within the first few seconds, the listener can tell that this will be no tiptoe through the tulips. Just a few heartbeats later, the music progresses to a chord of such startling force that even novice listeners notice it -- this sonority, known as the Neapolitan chord, would generally be saved for an especially dramatic point well into the unfolding of the form. For Schubert to employ it so early means he has other harmonic tricks up his sleeve so much more unexpected and powerful that he can afford to spend this coup in the very opening gambit.
Schubert clearly models these pieces on Beethoven’s heroic Kreutzer Sonata, op. 47, trying to outdo in intensity the Kreutzer’s three movements in this Rondo’s one. Even within the full ternary form of this introduction, Schubert will include most of the tonal devices he pioneered: voice crossings effected through transfer of register, third relations substituting for dominant ones, intricate strings of sequences that carry chromatic implications beyond the limits of classical tonality, and so many other innovations that cannot be described save in technical terms not easily transferable to common parlance. The introduction calls so much attention to itself that it must be followed by a single great movement rather than one of several. Even before the introduction ends, one senses the import of what is to come.
The actual rondo Allegro follows the traditional wheel-in-a-wheel form far more regularly than one might have expected from Schubert, but one soon hears just where within this form the special places reside. Instead of concentrating on the main melodic ideas, the lyric places so tonally stable and easy to serve as signposts, Schubert breaks away from each theme early and often to concentrate much of his time and effort in the interstices, either in transition to something new, or in circuitous retransition back to something previously heard. The moments of tonal and melodic stability seem tiny islands in a sea of eddying currents, themselves only the tip of a landscape hidden beneath the surface, controlled by a tonal inner force that drives everything forward with a momentum rarely encountered outside of concerto finales. The demands made upon the duo throughout this rondo make each play as though chased by ten devils, or like duo concerto players in search of an accompanying orchestra. We should feel fortunate to encounter this work at a time and in a place when performers have grown to appreciate its virtues and have learned to bring them into high relief, rather than when it was regarded as “little better than organized chaos.”
Joel Sheveloff
