Lewis Couples Schubert to Weber in Latest Album

courtesy of PIAS

This Friday PIAS will release a new harmonia mundi album of the latest project by pianist Paul Lewis. Over the course of my writing, I have accounted for three two-CD albums of Lewis playing the solo piano music of Franz Schubert. The new album will present one of the sonatas he has not yet recorded, D. 575 in B major. This time, however, the Schubert selection will be preceded by a sonata by Carl Maria von Weber, his Opus 39 (second) sonata in A-flat major.

Schubert was a little more than ten years younger than Weber. Ironically, he came to know both Weber and Ludwig van Beethoven in the same year, 1822, but never established much of a relationship with either of them. Nevertheless, if one is to think in terms of how “abstract” music began to take on “dramatic” qualities, one could probably draw a relatively clear line that would run from Beethoven through Weber to Schubert. For those who cannot wait to trace this line, Amazon.com is currently taking pre-orders on the Web page for Lewis’ album.

Regardless of that encounter, it is unclear how much Schubert knew or thought about Weber. He probably knew that Weber’s Euryanthe opera had been a failure; but that would, at best, have been cold comfort for the fact that his own ventures into opera were no more successful (and probably less). The more interesting question would have been whether he knew of Weber’s four-hand piano music (a genre in which Schubert excelled prodigiously) or the extent to which Weber worked in shorter forms for solo piano as well as sonatas. It would not surprise me if those of us that have built up libraries of recorded solo piano performances have better knowledge of Weber than Schubert ever bothered to acquire!

Sadly, that knowledge does not do a new recording of Opus 39 many favors. For better or worse, Weber seems to have had a toolbox of tropes that would serve him well in the genre of chamber music (including solo piano music). It will not take much familiarity with the Weber catalog to detect at least some of those tropes in Opus 39; and the fact that they tend to emerge as “all-purpose” devices tends to undermine the composer’s efforts to evoke intense dramatic undercurrents. Nevertheless, Lewis certainly does what he can to cast Weber’s sonata in a positive light.

Ironically, D. 575 was composed in August of 1817, meaning that it predates his encounters with Weber and Beethoven. Unfortunately, it was never published during Schubert’s lifetime. The music only saw the light of day in 1844 thanks to Anton Diabelli’s publishing company. (For the record, Schubert was one of the “composers other than Beethoven” to have contributed a variation to the waltz theme that Diabelli circulated among 51 composers. Weber, on the other hand, was not on Diabelli’s list!)

It is also worth noting that Weber’s sonata was first published in 1816, meaning that there is at least some possibility that Schubert was aware of it before he began work on D. 575. However, it is unlikely that Weber served as a source of influence. If Schubert needed motivation to get his juices flowing from earlier solo piano compositions, it is much more probable that he would have turned to the piano sonatas that Beethoven had completed by then (such as the Opus 57 “Appassionata” in F minor, which had been published in 1807). This is not to suggest that Schubert used any of Beethoven’s sonatas as models. However, there are adventurous qualities in D. 575 that may have been prompted by Schubert’s efforts to play Beethoven sonatas; and those listening to this album may well come to the conclusion that the results of those efforts do a good job of leaving Weber’s Opus 39 trailing in the dust.

My personal feeling is that Weber would have been better served by an all-Weber album, rather than one coupling him with Schubert; and, for my own part, I would have been happy to have another two-CD album of Lewis playing Schubert come my way!