Martin Helmchen on Schubert’s piano sonatas | EUROtoday

The live performance corridor within the Casals Forum of the Kronberg Academy has shortly acquired a fame as the most effective chamber music halls on the earth. Since it has its personal fashionable recording studio, increasingly musicians come right here to file CDs. The pianist Martin Helmchen additionally started an entire recording of all of Franz Schubert’s piano sonatas on this corridor for the Alpha Classics (Outhere) label. The first double CD is already available on the market. We interrupt him in the course of recording the G main sonata (he performs with out footwear as a result of they creak when he pedals) to speak to him in regards to the huge venture.

Rudolf Steiner as soon as described Franz Schubert’s music as “sublimated rowdiness.” When you research Schubert, which path do you are likely to go in direction of – sublimation or rowdiness?

Oh, that is attention-grabbing! I heard “Rauflust” for the primary time in reference to Schubert. We simply recorded a couple of rustic, rumbling passages within the finale of the G main sonata. This is a really folks music motion. That would slot in fairly nicely. In the background of this clarinet polka, this village idyll, there may be actually a combat happening. Otherwise, I consider that Schubert sublimates extra what remained unfulfilled in life and struggles much less.

But aren’t there so many unmotivated outbursts of violence in Schubert? Be it harmonically, by means of quantity or by means of sentence approach.

Absolutely. But there may be a lot tornness, psychoticness and depth on show that “Rauflust” sounds too cheerful to me. These eruptions at Schubert have one thing volcanic about them. The complete time you stroll on the flowering meadow you’ll be able to really feel that the lava is effervescent beneath. Suddenly she all of a sudden comes out. Just whenever you least count on it, with a violence that takes your breath away.

Schubert has one thing of a gunman: the chubby little man on the piano, referred to as “Schwammerl” by his associates, who eats up lots of anger.

You are completely proper. And this anger bursts out of him with none hope that the outburst would change something. Unlike Beethoven, who makes use of anger to assemble one thing and in the end redeem himself from it. With Schubert it’s all the time clear: destiny, injustice, the fixed distance from happiness can by no means be modified. There is nothing liberating about his outbursts of anger within the sense of change or redemption. These outbursts of anger occur to you. You are helplessly carried away by them. This grips you existentially as a listener and as a participant.

Beethoven’s anger is all the time built-in right into a logical course of that has a objective. Not with Schubert.

Exactly. I additionally discover Schubert’s anger to be irrational in comparison with Beethoven’s. The most well-known instance is the sluggish motion in F sharp minor from the good A serious sonata D 959, the place it hits so vehemently that nothing stays by way of type, concord and coherence. A stage of chaos is achieved that would now not be surpassed within the nineteenth century. Someone is within the eye of the storm and might’t do something. This is the expertise of being defenseless towards the best forces of the soul. You are completely satisfied – at the same time as a participant – each time you may have stable floor beneath your ft once more. And the reassurance afterwards is usually much more painful than the disaster itself. Because that is whenever you notice that the dangerous factor was all the time there and it will not go away. Never!

Friedrich Gulda largely averted Schubert as a result of he didn’t need to be drawn right into a vortex of demise. Isn’t that an exaggeration? A number of days earlier than his demise, Schubert defiantly requested whether or not there was a spot for him above the earth.

With Gulda, whom I like very a lot, there was definitely a little bit of coquetry concerned. I can nonetheless perceive his shyness. If you may have a minimum of somewhat empathy, you’ll be able to really feel the particular person behind the music extra straight with Schubert than with many different composers. There is a closeness that jumps at your throat. When I recorded the center A minor sonata, I needed to cease after the primary take as a result of I used to be so overwhelmed. It’s tough to maintain your distance as an interpreter.

They file Schubert’s sonatas on a Bösendorfer grand piano. What are the explanations for this?

I fell in love with this instrument on this corridor in Kronberg. It has typically been seen that Schubert and Bösendorfer go nicely collectively. The lyrical character of the instrument suits completely with the elemental tone, through which most of Schubert’s actions rise. When the outbursts come, the extremes in pianissimo and fortissimo, you may have the chance to let it rip with all of the colourful background noises, like on a historic instrument, with out overdriving in a means that’s opposite to the fashion. With a Steinway, the entire quantity would have been far too massive in such locations. And even within the excessive pianissimo, which may final for pages with Schubert, you keep higher sound management on a Bösendorfer. You could make what appears like fifteen shades of a pianissimo with the identical materials, whereas with different devices you’d really feel such as you’re consistently strolling on eggshells for concern that it will be too loud.

The left pedal normally helps.

Yes, however the left pedal on this instrument does not simply make the sound quieter, it is like its personal register on a historic instrument. Not solely does it dampen, it additionally colours. This grand piano additionally has glorious mechanical properties. In the fourth motion of the G main sonata there are pianissimo repetitions which can be set as if for a string sextet. If you need to play it evenly and springily and dance-like and melodically on the identical time, you attain the bounds of the mechanics of most devices. Here it goes. This mixture of corridor and instrument is solely exhilarating.

So you suppose past the piano in relation to your thought of ​​sound. At one level within the Siciliano of the unfinished E main Sonata D 157 I hear woodwind chords accompanied by the plucked double bass. However, Schubert units these bass pizzicatos in octaves, which makes the required quiet and simple execution tough.

Yes, that’s notably tough. And that is what works notably nicely right here. This Bösendorfer has a attribute that’s paying homage to historic devices. The registers stand out from one another and don’t combine right into a cloud. With textures just like the one you are speaking about, you’ll be able to hear particular person chords in an orchestral means. When writing, Schubert thought little of the piano, however quite of the orchestra or bigger chamber music. With him you consistently should imitate bass pizzicatos or brass traces. I understand the start of the B main sonata, which I used to be at the moment engaged on, as the start of an overture with an oboe solo. This has nothing to do with a piano texture and subsequently must be performed in another way. This works very well on this instrument. Surprisingly, this piano all of a sudden does issues that give me concepts that I would not have considered with out it. He conjures up me.

The first motion of the D main sonata D 850 seems like a piano discount of a symphony. The issue right here is definitely to create a lightweight, clear sound with a really thick sentence.

Yes, precisely! It should not turn out to be overwhelmingly huge, however should stay magnificently huge. Nothing thick, heavy or elephantine can be utilized. Here, too, the benefit of the instrument is that it permits the assault with out the quantity turning into an excessive amount of. I’m very excited in regards to the really unfinished C main sonata, the relic, through which the unpianistic nature of the construction is heightened to the purpose of absurdity. Paul Badura-Skoda, whom I like very a lot, convincingly argued that this can’t be piano music. It’s notably interesting to attempt it anyway, as a result of the piano stimulates the creativeness the place it exceeds the piano. It can be the case with Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” that they reveal their full wealth of associations within the piano model quite than within the orchestral model. Are you really positive that the early E main sonata is unfinished? It works very nicely.

Actually it really works very nicely. The scherzo or minuet on the finish may very well be seen as a finale in Haydn’s thoughts.

Even! This occurs so typically with Haydn.

Unfortunately the motion is in B main and never E main. That speaks towards it.

But that occurs typically with Schubert. The A flat main sonata, which one has fewer causes to contemplate unfinished, ends in E flat main. As unusual as which may be, it does occur generally. And the minuet of the E main sonata has a sweeping character.

It virtually looks as if a rondo.

Exactly. It may very well be a rondo. Dramaturgically it really works like a finale. I do not miss something after that. I are likely to suppose that Schubert meant this as a last phrase.

You’ve talked loads about historic wings. Have you had any playful experiences on them?

I more and more play historic devices. I recorded Johann Sebastian Bach’s partitas on a tangent grand piano from round 1790 that was not completely traditionally appropriate as a result of it was late. I’m additionally engaged on Schumann and Brahms on a grand piano from 1860. I’m feeling my means by means of the historical past of the keys. I have never but had the braveness to play Viennese classical music and Schubert on authentic devices in live performance. I’ve already tried it out: for myself – however not in entrance of an viewers or within the studio. I nonetheless want time for that.