New Classical Tracks: Getting to know Schubert

Barry Douglas - Schubert: Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 1 (Chandos 10807)

"I'm a latecomer to Schubert, though I've played a lot of Schubert in my life, ever since I was a teenager," pianist Barry Douglas admits. "But I wasn't sure if I understood, or that he understood me: let's put it that way. Or if he liked my playing. It's only recently I've realized that there's a depth in Schubert which inspires me incredibly. I find deep colors and deep emotions which are portrayed in a very timeless way, in a very measured way. It's painted on a canvas, but it's hung on the line which goes on forever — it's infinite."

Irish pianist Barry Douglas has just released the first in a series of recordings celebrating the solo piano works of Franz Schubert. For this first volume, Barry wanted to focus on Schubert at the height of his creative powers.

"Well, I wanted to start with two aspects of Schubert. One — his virtuoso piano writing and I think the Wanderer Fantasy is one of those pieces which shows the command that Schubert had. While he may not have played the piece on the piano, his forte wasn't maybe as a pianist, nevertheless, he produced something which is of mind-boggling difficulty and impression. Not to mention, of course, this way of writing a piece in one movement which inspired, of course, people like Liszt … where he shows off his compositional style. It's not a style. It's a credo, it's something which is overwhelming. Where from four or five little ideas, a whole piece emerges, which is monumental."

The other side of Schubert that Barry presents is his output of songs, as transcribed by Franz Liszt. "And Liszt has produced these incredible versions," Barry says. "They are original pieces in their own rights but they are comments, they are asides, about these great songs. And Liszt uses the piano in his own inimitable style to produce something which doesn't sound difficult but it is actually quite difficult. It's like he has found the essence of what Schubert is about, of Schubert lieder, and transcribed that onto the piano. And it's totally unique. So I wanted to put a selection of Liszt's interpretations of Schubert's songs on the albums."

The other monumental piece Barry Douglas included on this recording is the Piano Sonata in B flat major. There are those who believe Schubert composed this work as a last testament just before his death. "But I don't hear the hymn to death or hymn to life or farewell to life. I don't hear any of that in this music," Barry says. "I hear a kind of pure humanity, a kind of understanding. This is amazing, this is a guy in his early 30s and it touches us. You get the feeling that this is a wise old man who has seen so much of life. And then you look at his output and you realize, rather like Mozart, to have written all of that in a short space of time, he must have been constantly writing. Not even composing — it's like someone is dictating to him. Just to get that stuff down on paper, is quite amazing.

"But this piece, I think in a sense, sums up the human spirit, the human dilemma. A lot of what we all feel at our lowest ebb, our highest points in life, is in the sonata. And it's a whole range, rather like a Mahler or a Bruckner symphony."

Barry Douglas may be a late-comer to Schubert, so now maybe he's trying to make up for lost time as he plans not one, not two — but how many volumes of Schubert's piano music?

"I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that," Barry laughs. "I'm not quite sure because there's a lot of Schubert available to play on the piano. It will be all of the most important things he wrote for piano. This could be a project which could go on forever. But I'm hoping to contain it in maybe five years and get through it by then."

As he releases this first in a series of recordings celebrating the solo piano music of this great 19th-century Viennese composer, it's pretty clear Barry Douglas and Schubert have come to a mutual understanding of one another.

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