Biography

Scottish-born pianist Steven Osborne is one of the UK’s most treasured musicians, with an immense depth of musicality and exceptional refinement of expression across diverse repertoire, be it in Beethoven, Schubert, Messiaen, Kapustin, or jazz improvisation. His recitals are publicly and critically acclaimed without exception. The Observer described him as “always a player in absolute service to the composer.” Residencies at London’s Wigmore Hall, Antwerp’s deSingel, the Bath International Music Festival, the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra are testaments to the respect he commands. Osborne has been an exclusive Hyperion artist since 1998, with some three dozen recordings to date. The disc that brought him to international attention was Messiaen's epic Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus in 2002. His ongoing contract with Hyperion has resulted in numerous awards in the UK, France, Germany and the USA, including two Gramophone Awards, three Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik Awards, and a Choc in Classica Magazine, in addition to a clutch of Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and Recordings of the Year from The Daily Telegraph. Osborne was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to music in the 2022 Queen’s New Year Honours. 1st LMMC solo recital.

https://www.stevenosborne.com/

Notes

The sonata we hear this afternoon, completed in September 1828 six weeks before Schubert died, is the composer’s last. It is one of the greatest works (many claim the greatest) in a genre that occupied Schubert all his life except for the three-year period of 1820-1822. Olympian in scope, expansive yet coherently organized in its concern for proportion and balance, saturated with gorgeous lyricism and often discussed in terms of hushed reverence by its admirers, the Sonata in B-flat stands as a landmark in the history of musical achievements. It might well be regarded as the “sonata of heavenly length,” just as Schumann had dubbed Schubert’s final symphony (the Great C-major), also composed in 1828, the “symphony of heavenly length.”

Schubert “was not the master builder that Beethoven was,” observes musicologist Joseph Machlis. “Inevitably he loosened the form, introducing into its flexible architecture the elements of caprice and whimsy, improvisation and inspired lyricism. His sonatas are spacious, fantasy-like compositions that display all the characteristics of the Schubertian style  ̶  spontaneous melody, richly expressive harmonies, rhythmic vitality, charming changes of key, emotion-charged shifts from major to minor, figuration that is almost always fresh and personal (with an occasional tendency to ramble), and great freedom in the handling of classical form.”

The Diabelli Variations, like Schubert’s Sonata D. 960, constitute one of the towering masterpieces of the entire piano literature. No less a figure than Alfred Brendel called it “the greatest piano work ever written, nothing less!”

The story of how the Diabelli Variations came into being is well-known, though its veracity has been questioned. In l819, a Viennese music publisher, Anton Diabelli (1781-1858), conceived the idea of commissioning about fifty composers each to write a variation based on a waltz tune (actually, a Ländler) he had written. All the variations would then be gathered together in a single volume. Beethoven too was asked, of course, but rather than making his single contribution, he spent four years amassing a veritable encyclopedia of 33 variations that Diabelli had to publish separately as “Part I” of his grand project. (Part II consisted of everyone else’s pieces lumped together.)

Across the huge, fifty-five-minute span of these variations, Beethoven takes us from a trivial little tune through a cosmos of creativity, culminating in a double fugue of great power and impetus. Along the way, we encounter an astonishing variety of moods and spiritual worlds, from boisterous humor through gaiety, glitter, pomp, caprice, intimacy, solemnity and mystery to rarefied tranquility. Some variations look back to the stylistic traits of Bach, Handel and Mozart; some reveal the Beethoven of his age; and still others look forward to the tones and textures of Schumann and Brahms.

Robert Markow