Inside the Genius of Franz Schubert: ‘Schubert’s Last Year’ with Bravo! Vail
July 12, 2024The music that Franz Schubert composed in the last year of his life, some of it when he was not quite 31, is astounding. The 20th-century composer Benjamin Britten went so far as to suggest that “the richest and most productive” period in all of music history was the 18 months between Beethoven’s death, in early 1827, and Schubert’s own (he had contracted syphilis about six years before he died in late 1828). That is the historical context for this year’s Immersive Experiences series at Bravo! Vail, with four programs — from July 15 to 17 — designed to impart a deeper understanding of the genius of Schubert in the last year of his life.
“Every single piece that he wrote is a masterpiece,” said Anne-Marie McDermott, the artistic director of Bravo! Vail, about that period. “Timelessness is one of the qualities. I find that time stops when you’re performing or listening to Schubert. He speaks to everybody on so many different levels.”
The first Schubert piece that McDermott, a renowned pianist, remembers appreciating was the Impromptu No. 2, in E-flat, for piano. “It’s fascinating because as a kid, when you play Schubert, it doesn’t seem like it’s that hard. But then as you dig deeper and deeper, it becomes a very profound experience,” she said. It was the first Schubert piece she learned, besides the B-flat Trio for piano, violin, and cello — one of the pieces from that miraculous period, which she used to play with her two sisters as a teenager.
On July 15, at the Donovan Pavilion, McDermott and violinist Ari Isaacman-Beck will play Fantaisie in C major for violin and piano, a technically demanding work that features a set of variations as its centerpiece. “What is required when you’re performing the piece is you have to get to a place where you’re not giving one thought to the technical aspects of it,” McDermott said. “In other words, you have to practice a lot, so that you’re free of any of the technical challenges.”
Also on that program is the Trio No. 2 in E-flat — a companion piece to the one in B-flat that McDermott grew up playing. The E-flat Trio was first performed at a now-famous event on March 26, 1828 — the only public concert devoted to Schubert’s music that took place during his life. Both trios are magical, but, if forced to list the “top-10 most profound pieces of music in the entire repertoire,” McDermott said, sitting beside the Sonata in B-flat would be the String Quintet in C (with an extra cello). It is a stirring, time-stopping gem, nearly one hour long, which the Dalí Quartet and cellist Carter Brey will perform on the second evening at Donovan. “It’s epic, a feast of a piece of music. It takes the listener through so many different emotional landscapes,” McDermott said.
McDermott will tackle the long Sonata in B-flat, the composer’s last, on July 16. It’s a 40-minute journey made of contrasting moods, covering the full panoply of musical expression through shifting tonalities that lead to emotional climaxes and dark terrain. “He found this incredible combination between childlike innocence and deep human suffering, and was somehow able to combine them,” she explained. Some of the themes, like in the last movement, are “innocent, almost childlike.”
“I always tell people, when I’m playing the B-flat sonata, to sit back and relish this, and have patience,” she said. “You don’t need to know the first thing about Schubert to completely relish Schubert and to get Schubert; you just need to have open ears and an open heart, and let his music speak to you in a very personal way.”
On July 17 at Vail Interfaith Chapel, McDermott will talk about Schubert’s Impromptus, a collection of eight pieces for solo piano with a general extemporaneous air. “They have a youthful exuberance to them, even though they were written in the last year of his life,” she said. “As you explore these works deeper and deeper, you discover that there’s even more to them than what is on the surface.” For the occasion, McDermott has chosen the Impromptus 2, 3, and 4, taking her back to that first Schubert work that made an impression on her: the E-flat. She will demonstrate the pieces, playing them in full, and explain what makes them such important contributions to the piano literature.
The fourth program, a free community concert in the afternoon of July 16, highlights the 2024 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellows, Ariel Lanyi and Janice Carissa, who will perform most of what Schubert wrote in his last year for piano four hands. A highlight is the dramatic Allegro in A minor, Lebensstürme (“life’s storms”), which is not performed very often. McDermott aptly describes it as “very stormy, virtuosic, and amazing.”
Read the full article at VailDaily.com