Julia Fischer / Martin Helmchen FRANZ SCHUBERT Complete Works for Violin and Piano - Volume 1

The great similarity between the first movement (Allegro molto) of Franz Schubert’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in D major, D. 384 (Op. posth. 137, No. 1, dating from 1816) and the first movement of the Sonata for Piano and Violin in E minor, K. 304 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart must have already been emphasised hundreds of times. The analogies are more than simply astonishing, they are essential – and at the same time, existential. Deliberately so: because at the age of 19, Schubert had well outgrown the need to “crib”. Nevertheless, Schubert imitated his example in every aspect of this Mozart-like movement, including the transitions, secondary motifs and even in the manner he dealt with the rests. And yet he achieved more than simply a “copy”. Schubert’s Allegro molto is a reflection, a kind of “question set to music”: where do I want to go? And the answer must be: I got there a long time since! Because all the later characteristics that gradually emerged to define his personality as a composer (i.e. abrupt stops, harmonic surprises, the ecstasy of the moment vs. the dashing of hope) are already present here and are leading him, as it were, “through Mozart up to himself”. (Pentatone)