The Carey Concert: Music of Schubert and Schumann, Charles Fisk, piano

In a program to complement his course entitled “Schubert, Schumann and the Lyric Impulse,” pianist and Phyllis Henderson Professor of Music Charles Fisk performs Schubert’s two very different sonatas in A major, and, between them, Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana. The earlier of the Schubert sonatas, composed in 1819, shares with the “Trout” Quintet, of the same year and in the same key, a charmed lyricism and a play of light and shadow. In the later sonata, completed only a month before Schubert’s early death in 1828, the play of light and shadow has become an existential struggle against darkness and alienation, in which the music wins its way to lyrical fulfillment only in the concluding rondo. Schumann’s piano cycles owe their inspiration, at last in part, to Schubert’s song cycles. Kreisleriana, whose title refers to Johannes Kreisler, the moody violinist alter ego of writer and composer E. T. A. Hoffmann, encompasses the greatest imaginable range of moods, from the most agitated, obsessive and violent to the most tender and intimate.

FREE and open to the public. RSVP recommended to get seating.