Schubert wrote four impromptus in 1827; his publisher printed only the first two. The third — this one — stayed in a drawer until 1857, twenty-nine years after his death. It is a single melody sung for six minutes, over a left hand that flows from the first bar to the last without stopping. The full piano score is on screen, note by note.
He wrote six flats; the version that got printed had one
In 1827 Schubert was thirty. Beethoven had died that March. Schubert wrote four impromptus that year, and the Viennese publisher Haslinger printed two of them at the end of it, as Opus 90.
The third and fourth were not printed. They waited until 1857 — twenty-nine years after Schubert's death — to appear for the first time.
And the 1857 print had been altered. Schubert wrote the piece in G-flat major, six flats, in 4/2 time, four half notes to a bar. The published version was moved to G major, one sharp, rebarred into 4/4, which doubled the number of bars. The usual explanation is that it sold better that way: six flats was a real obstacle for the people who bought sheet music to play at home.
Schubert's G-flat original did not reach print until the complete edition of 1888. Most players today use the original, and so does this recording.
The year after writing these four pieces, in November 1828, Schubert died. He was thirty-one.
One melody sung for six minutes, over water that never stops
Three layers arrive together at the opening: a slowly singing melody on top, a wide band of continuous movement in the middle, and one held bass note at the bottom. That middle layer has not stopped since the first bar and will not stop until the end — you do not particularly notice it, but you would notice at once if it stopped.
The phrases are long. A line goes out, you expect it to land, and it is still going; when it does land you exhale. This is Schubert at his most characteristic.
The middle section sinks. The sound drops into the bass, the bright key darkens, and for a few bars it is as though someone had turned half the lights off. Then it climbs slowly back up, reaches the highest note in the piece, and the opening melody returns exactly as it was.
The last bars close very quietly: the flowing left hand slows and thins out and settles on the lowest note. Nothing in the piece is ever really loud.
The same sentence three times, with one dark journey in between
Eighty-eight bars, four half notes to each — a time signature rare in piano music, and its effect is to fit very long phrases into a single bar, which looks slow and sounds wide.
Bars 1 to 24 are the theme, the same sentence walked three times over different harmony. From bar 25 the sound begins to stack upward and thicken. At bar 35 it drops away entirely: those four bars sit in the bass, the darkest place in the piece. From there it climbs, and the highest note of the whole piece arrives at bar 49.
At bar 55 the theme comes back untouched, almost note for note the same as the opening twenty-odd bars. From bar 69 the reprise leaves its course and turns towards the close: the flowing left hand thins out step by step and finally settles on the lowest note.
The accompaniment underneath is one figure the whole way: triplets pushing forward group by group, never fast, and never once broken.
The notes are not the difficulty; six flats and a left hand that cannot stop are
The notes themselves are not fast. Two things make it hard.
First, the key. G-flat major has six flats and almost every white key is lowered, so the hand keeps wanting to read it as some other key; both sight-reading and memorising cost extra. That is exactly why the 1857 publisher moved it to G major.
Second, the layering. The right-hand melody has to sing and its phrases must not break, while the same hand — usually the thumb — also carries the continuous middle line, which has to stay quieter than the tune. Three layers, three dynamic levels: that is the central task here.
The dark middle section sits low, where too much pedal turns to mud; those bars need changing more often than the rest.
Do not rush it. This version is at 108 to the quarter, four half notes to the bar, six minutes thirty-eight; any quicker and you stop hearing the melody sing.
We rate this 4 out of 5.
The other three of the set, and the piano music of his last years
The first of the same set is in C minor and opens like a march; the second runs in continuous fast figuration and is the one students play most; the fourth is in A-flat, with broken chords falling from the top of the keyboard. All four were written in 1827.
There is a second set of four impromptus, D. 935, also from 1827; its third piece is a set of variations.
For the same period, equally slow and long: the last three piano sonatas, D. 958, 959 and 960, written in the year he died.
