In the eyes of his contemporaries, Schubert loomed larger as a composer of vocal music than of instrumental works. Only toward the end of his tragically foreshortened lifetime did audiences and critics grow to appreciate his rich trove of orchestral and chamber masterpieces, ranging from symphonies to piano solos. Even then, less than a quarter of his major works in these genres—including just three of his 21 piano sonatas—saw the light of publication before his death in 1828.

The three works we hear on this evening’s program span the decade of his brief, precocious maturity. The vivacious three-movement Sonata in A Minor is among a cluster of works written in 1817 during a euphoric period of independence when the 20-year-old composer got away from his parents’ home and stayed with a friend in the center of Vienna. Eight years later, Schubert embarked on a more expansive work, the Sonata in C Major, but unaccountably left the last two of its four movements incomplete, hence the publisher’s subtitle “Reliquie” (“Relic”). Schubert’s last three sonatas, D. 958–960, are even more remarkable for the grandeur of their conception. The first movement of the Sonata in B-flat Major is one of the composer’s most spacious musical structures, being almost as long as the other three movements combined.