Fierrabras or Schubert Goes to the Opera

Like almost every other major romantic composer Schubert was an opera goer and dreamed of success in that world himself. He had had lessons with Salieri and was particularly fond it seems of Gluck, Mozart's Magic Flute and the stage works of both Cherubini and Spontini and Beethoven's Fidelio.

Unlike almost any other romantic composer Schubert had a natural affinity for writing for the voice.There are many many sacred works that show his progress and fluency in choral writings and a body of songs of unrivaled variety, depth and melodic invention. It was only a matter of time and following a series of one act works (that we know largely as overtures) and finally by 1822 the call came. The Vienna Court Opera Theater commissioned him to deliver a German language opera.The result,after an initial failure with Alfonso and Estrella was Fierrabras. For a libretto he turned to Josef Kupelweiser, brother of his friend Leopold a member of the Schubertiade circle and more importantly a secretary at the Court Opera. Which makes the result all the stranger. In the interval between the granting of the commission and the completion of the opera (May 1822 and Oct.1823) two events intervened. First, the arrival and rage for the works of Rossini and then the failure of Weber's Euryanthe. Fierrarbras was submitted and we read that Schubert was never paid, but also that Fierrabras was not rejected. It lay in unperformed limbo until the 1870's long after his death. Musicologist now pronounce it's music magnificent .

Please tune in to this Saturday Afternoon at the Opera for Schubert's long neglected Fierrabras, this week at noon on KPAC and KTXI.

host, Ron Moore

Honens winners continue…

Esther Honens loved the piano and as a successful business women she combined the two by donating 5 million dollars to an international piano competition to be held in Calgary Alberta every three years.

As part of the package the laureates receive is three years of free management and consultation to help them with their careers. Part of this package is professionally recorded CDs to show their talent. On the Piano this week more from these exceptional musicians with compositions of Ravel, Debussy, Szymanowski, Bach and a musical farewell of Franz Schubert.

Hear more of the laureates of the Honens Competition this Sunday at 5 on KPAC & KTXI.

host, Randy Anderson

Are you still keeping up?

It is possible for a pianist to compose music that they cannot duplicate at a piano? Having a wide range of virtues, a virtuoso can play with distinction, music that others stumble through.

On the Piano this Sunday compositions that tax even accomplished performers like Franz Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, then music that Stravinsky composed to take on the road and earn some much needed money and the concert ends with Maurice Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit, a monster-piece that was composed with ultimate difficulties in mind. Never fear, at the piano we have Laureates of the Honens International Piano Competition performing these masterworks.

The Piano heard every Sunday afternoon at 5 on KPAC & KTXI.

host, Randy Anderson

Happy birthday Franz

On the 214th anniversary of Franz Schubert's birth, we thought we'd share this concert video of Philippe Entremont in Schubert's final piano sonata.


Entremont: Schubert 1 from John Clare on Vimeo.

Size isn't everything…

Franz Schubert had great friends and he needed them. His father wanted him to teach school but Franz was built to compose music and what started as a family hobby turned into an all consuming passion. Giving up his teaching job, Schubert turned to his friends and with their help he was allowed, slowly and painfully, to become the artist he knew himself to be.

On the Piano this Sunday more of Schubert's powerful, short piano works, dubbed Impromptus by his publisher. These pieces communicated Schubert's personality as well as any of his nearly one-thousand compositions. This week we pick up with number 6 of the eight composed in 1827. Schubert had his joy of being published tempered with the knowledge that the printer wanted short easy works for the student that would sell. Some, Robert Schumann and music critic Alfred Eisenstein see the second set of "impromptus" as a disguised piano sonata. Whether it is or not, we hear the last three works of the second set and three Klavierstucke or piano pieces composed in Schubert's last year of life that stretch his piano technique to its most demanding. Again, I look for the most persuasive of the recordings available to me and you can hear them on the Piano, this Sunday afternoon at 5 on KPAC & KTXI.

host, Randy Anderson

Record it again, Sam...

Recorded music has been around since 1877 and true to America's marketing genius we music lovers have been buying the same recordings again and again, the only difference being the format. 78 rpm, long play records, cassettes, El Cassettes, Reel to Reel tape, CDs and then super CDs with higher bit rates. On the Piano this Sunday the playing of Walter Gieseking in the cleanest sound yet. We hear him play Debussy's Suite Bergamasque and also a new recording of Schubert's mighty G major sonata with Seymour Lipkin.

The Piano this Sunday afternoon at 5 on KPAC & KTXI.

host Randy Anderson

A Competition Rarity

It is interesting to watch piano competitions through the years and see the fashions of classical music. One can be lulled into a mindset that since the notes haven't changed the music is eternal. That is partially right, but just listen to the Beethoven Symphonies from the war years as conducted by the musical dictators of the era, Toscanini, Furtwangler and Mengelberg. The works are militant, powerful and at times hysterical. Interpretations have calmed over the years and for better or worst, reflect a more peaceful world. Piano competitions have there fashions; consider the glut of late Beethoven Sonatas or Gaspard del la Nuit and authentic versus transcribed Bach. On the Piano this Sunday a competition rarity, Schubert's late c minor Sonata brilliantly performed as well as Bach in transcription and Chopin.

The Piano this Sunday afternoon at 5 on KPAC and KTXI.

host Randy Anderson

James Dick @ Round Top

This last Saturday audiences got a preview of the August to April series @ Round Top. Host John Clare was on hand to emcee and film some of the concert...here is the finale, with founder & pianist James Dick. He plays two impromptus by Franz Schubert.

Keyboard genius

Last week, host John Clare was in New York for a day at the International Keyboard Institute and Festival, and caught his friend Philippe Entremont on stage. Here is part of that performance, the opening movement of Schubert's final Piano Sonata, D. 960.


Tune in every Wednesday for the Piano Puzzler on Performance Today with Fred Child and Bruce Adolphe!

Schumann's favorite Sonata

In 1826, ill and struggling desperately to succeed as a composer or die trying Franz Schubert wrote his big G major Piano Sonata. Starting with a chord reminiscent of the solo piano opening to Beethoven's 4th Concerto Schubert seems to have briefly inherited Beethoven's magisterial calm. A great and very classical sonata is the result. One of three sonatas published in Schubert's lifetime, it was Robert Schumann's favorite and in time it influenced his music as well.

Hear a new recording of Schubert's big G major Sonata and the latest remastering of recordings by one of the greats of the twentieth century, Walter Gieseking on the Piano this Sunday afternoon at 5 on KPAC and KTXI.

host Randy Anderson

Protean Music

Some pieces of music are so packed with possibilities that they can change the course of the musical arts. Franz Schubert wrote a two-fisted Fantasie in C major for a well off pianist that was a pupil of Hummel. Schubert may have been thinking of a rich remuneration when composing the Wanderer Fantasie but the riches lay in the melodic transformations in this inspired music. A young Franz Liszt was studying in Vienna at the time, just down the street in fact, and while he never met Schubert face to face he learned many lessons from the "Wanderer".

Find out some of the ways this protean work changed music on the Piano this Sunday afternoon at 5 on KPAC and KSTX.

host Randy Anderson

Deathless Art

Schubert was much more experienced than his 31 years would suggest. Classical composers are sophisticated, that goes without saying, but how advanced were the greats at 28 years of age? Schubert was gifted as a child and writing with charm and his unique voice at age twelve, at the end of his short life he was a giant.

Yes he was striving to be an opera composer and with Rossini and Mozart's operas there wasn't room for more, but Schubert is a great composer that had limited access to orchestras. In the last year of life, which Benjamin Britten described "miraculous", Schubert's compositions are sublime. His interplay between light and dark, major and minor are more than techniques but a subtext to our inner selves.

On the piano this Sunday the last of Franz Schubert's Impromptus. In the hands of a great interpreter, these works are transcendental art. When you have a pianist of the caliber of Edwin Fischer you have music of the highest order.

The Piano, this Sunday afternoon at 5 here on KPAC and KTXI.

host Randy Anderson

When is an Impromptu not an impromptu?

The invention of piano Impromptu is generally credited to the Bohemian composer Jan Hugo Vorisek. It genre became a hit in Vienna and when Franz Schubert wrote four short piano pieces for his new publisher Tobias Haslinger. Being a businessman and wanting in on the "Impromptu" fever Haslinger re-titled the pieces Impromptus and the sales were quite respectable for a little known composer like Schubert.

What is interesting is that Haslinger pegged the works exactly. Schubert may not have intended to write Impromptus, but that is what they are, delicate ruminative flowers that are as fresh today as they were when penned in 1827.

Tune in to the Piano this Sunday afternoon at 5 for Schubert's Impromptus (part 1) on KPAC and KXTI.

host Randy Anderson