F.Schubert, as Blasco de Nebra, lived in a period of musical evolution, and he explored the connecting way between Classicism and Romanticism, never reaching a full reconciliation of the two, as this wasn’t his artistic aim. Often added to the “First Viennese School” – originally listing Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven only – Schubert (1797-1828) is actually the only Vienna-born member of this group. Vienna, a central musical hub at this time, as was Seville for Spain during the life of Blasco de Nebra.

Rather than choosing an early piece, a sonata, for this programme, as with the late Mozart Fantasias’, I have chosen the Drei Klavierstücke, completed in May 1828, the year of Schubert’s death. Published posthumously by J.Brahms in 1868, it is said that these pieces should have been completed by a fourth one and were conceived as a third set of Impromptus. Like the Impromptus, the Drei Klavierstücke express in microcosm so much of Schubert’s unique sound world and musical personality – daring and unusual harmonies, beautiful songful melodies, and episodes of profound poignancy or intimacy. Throughout these three pieces, we hear the extraordinarily broad scope of his creativity and emotional landscape. On another hand, these pieces are impromptus in all but name, showing a maturity and mastery of the structure that hadn’t been achieved before. All the three pieces share a similar rondo pattern, even though each one of them forms a closed and independent poetical and dramatic universe on their own. Qualified as “music more eloquent than words” they are the perfect example of how Schubert took music out of the salons, into nature or into another kind of domestic intimacy where in his own words “When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love.”