Ran Jia’s Schubert Sonata Cycle (I)

About the Event

Experience classical music like never before in this astonishing performance of masterworks by Schubert at Shanghai's remarkable Shanghai Symphony Hall.

Musicologists usually agree that Schubert expressed in their piano Sonatas what were his most intimate thoughts like Beethoven did, and they both left a collection of sonatas approximately the same size and importance. How then can one explain that relatively few of Schubert's piano sonatas are known to a wider music public, and a complete cycle of these works is even less available on concert or recordings? The delay in the discovery of Schubert's sonatas — continues even today to some extent — is of course due to the complicated history of composition and publishing: only three of them were published during the composer's life, and around half were left incomplete. Usually not written for publishers, these sonatas are more experimental in both harmony and form. Besides, the difficulty of interpreting Schubert well has been much discussed. 'His Sonatas require a 'flexible' touch, always lyrical but often orchestral, which a pianist who is only a virtuoso will not succeed in finding, since each piece of Schubert’s requires an approach with great love and a natural attitude, without affectations, vis-à-vis music and life,' written pianist Paul Badura‐Skoda.

The young Chinese pianist Ran Jia is daughter of the famous composer Daqun Jia. Like Lang Lang, she also studied with Gary Graffman at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She has appeared successfully in venues like Lincoln Center in New York and the Berliner Philharmonie. Schubert's music has been her interest for long, as she once said in interview 'his music has become my mission in my musical life.' She has already performed this Schubert cycle of all eleven completed piano sonatas in Germany earlier, winning numerous critical acclaims.