The Secret Melody

Description

For the tenth volume of the complete works of Schubert's sonatas and major piano pieces, Mathieu Gaudet turns to a work of unabashed romanticism: Sonata No. 4 in A minor (D. 537), composed in 1817. While the outer movements are very dramatic, the central slow movement features a long, charming, and delicate melody, almost fragile. Eleven years later, in 1828, he revisits this same melody to create the final movement of his penultimate sonata, Sonata No. 19 in A major D. 959. This allegretto may be the most "Schubertian" of the composer's works: generous, graceful, full of hope despite a dense melancholy, always in motion. The reprise of this melody composed at the age of 20 attests to the special love the composer has for it; it is his personal anthem, his secret melody.