Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Piano Sonata no. 20 in A major, D.959

The British pianist reveals new ideas in the most familiar of music in this recital program, which concludes a multi-year return to Schubert's keyboard literature.

Once decried as “dangerously introspective”, Schubert's Piano Sonata D.959 is now seen as one of his masterpieces. Eric Lu shows how he is completely on the composer's wavelength in this compelling performance.

Enigmatic and uncanny piano music from Schubert in an intense recital at the Royal Festival Hall. 

Understated mastery in Peter Donohoe’s recital of Scriabin, Ravel, Schumann, Mozart and Schubert in Hall One Sage Gateshead.

With thought-inspiring programming, Schiff played the penultimate sonatas of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert.

Sir András Schiff is traversing the final three piano sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in concerts which celebrate the sonata form and explore the notion of "late style" in relation to these composers.

Sir András Schiff delivers deeply profound performances of the final piano sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert.

Schubert’s last three piano sonatas, published posthumously in 1839, were brought to new life with thrilling intensity and a sense of authority by one of Britain’s most self-effacing recitalists.

An effective Bach, a disappointing Brahms and a generally satisfactory Schubert: Kovacevich fails to grip in Dublin. 

Schubert cycles are in the air: earlier this month pianist James Lisney’s wide-ranging ‘Schubertreise’ series reached its journey’s end at London’s Purcell Room, and on Saturday evening Imogen Cooper concluded her own survey of Schubert’s piano sonatas with a performance of the last three sonatas to a packed, attentive and highly appreciative Wigmore Hall audience.

For a performer with a reputation for intelligent, thought-provoking programming, this looked rather an odd selection of works. The first half of this Wigmore Hall recital featured three pieces Inon Barnatan recorded on his 2012 CD Darknesse Visible, charting works based on other works; Debussy on Verlaine, Stevenson on Britten, and Ravel on Poe.

Paul Lewis’ current tour constitutes the final instalment of his Schubert cycle. As is the fashion, largely following Artur Schnabel and more recently Alfred Brendel, Lewis plays the last three sonatas as a trilogy, with the D.958 and D.959 played before the interval and the D.960 afterwards.

If your ears happen to frequent the frequencies of the BBC’s classical music radio station, it’s highly possible that you’ll have been swamped by piano music this monsoon season. Piano notes have poured down upon us, flooding the airwaves with this extraordinary instrument’s capacity to evoke everything from orchestras to ocarinas, from tempestuousness to tranquillity, from Moonlight to Raindrops.