There can be few composers – with the possible exception of Mahler – who sat down with the intention of writing a last symphony or a final string quartet. Yet the idea of finality has an undeniable fascination; it confers an arbitrary privilege on those works which happened to be the last to emerge, and almost demands that we search within them for presentiments of death. It is this fascination that provided Sir András Schiff with the thematic structure for his recent series of recitals at the Kammermusiksaal; entitled ‘Last Sonatas’ the series presented the final three piano sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert over the course of three evenings.
If the four sonatas that made up the final concert of the series never quite conveyed the sense of great composers grappling with mortality, they nonetheless made for a programme that…
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