The
Schubert Project
“Schubert Ascending”
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
November 6-10 , 2009
Alice Tully Hall, New York City
Schubert Ascending
In the last year of his life, whether as a result of the deeply affecting death of his beloved master Beethoven, or the premonition of his own death a few months later, Franz Schubert’s music embodied an increasing maturity and intensity as he confronted the concepts of life and death.
That new-found awareness seemed to inspire a 31-year-old Schubert to compose, in an astonishingly short space of time, music that is otherworldly and sublime yet utterly personal and human. In that extraordinary year, Schubert seemed to arrive at a heightened sense of being. His emotions appear with more intensity and poignancy; the joy is more joyful, the sadness more heartbreaking, the darkness more desperate and the light more luminous.
In this project I brought together some of the greatest masterpieces of that final year, from the intimate songs to the epic solo and chamber works. These pieces provide us with a rewarding glimpse into the musical diary Schumann alludes to, in which Schubert bares his soul and illuminates its furthest corners.
I am extremely grateful to the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and especially its artistic directors, David Finckel and Wu Han, for allowing me to present this project as part of the CMSLC season, and to you the listener for joining us in this celebration of Schubert. Finally, I’d like to offer my sincere thanks to the exceptional musicians who make this project possible.
Inon Barnatan
“Franz Schubert has tones for the most delicate shades of feeling, thoughts, even accidents and occurrences of life… What for others was a diary in which to set down momentary feeling was for Schubert a sheet of music paper to which he entrusted his every mood, so that his thoroughly musical soul wrote notes when others wrote words” (Robert Schumann)
