Between April 1813 and June 1828, Schubert wrote some 32 scores requiring a partner or pupil. For him, the piano four hands was ‘always a place of exchange and dialogue, a symbol of fraternal communion within the same affective universe’, as Brigitte Massin summed it up so well. In addition to dances, marches, Ländler, divertimenti, variations and varied themes, Schubert left a modest, highly moving testament in the Fantasy in F minor, a masterpiece of the genre. Here it is coupled with a few artful examples of this new literature for an instrument that had just found its technical optimisation in the invention of the double escapement.
PRD/DSD 250 263