Steven Osborne | Oxford Piano Festival

The towering pianistic talent that is Steven Osborne opens the festival at Christ Church Cathedral with two standout masterpieces of the Viennese school. He starts with Schubert’s last and greatest piano sonata – a work of introspection, volatility but unbounded lyricism that had a profound influence on Beethoven. And Beethoven balances it here in the form of the greatest set of keyboard variations after Bach’s Goldbergs – the journey from the plain to the celestial that is Beethoven’s monumental Diabelli Variations.