Schubert: Piano Sonatas D. 840 & D. 960

Album review

Being in his sixties gives Jean-Marc Luisada a quiet serenity that he puts to good use in Schubert's final Sonata in B flat major, D. 960. It's a work which he sees as the culmination of a whole life, Schubert's of course, but maybe also of the French pianist's career. This is an artist who really knows how to bring out all the desolate melancholy from Schubert's material, probably by mixing in his own personal life experiences and his own questions.

A film buff, Luisada is a veritable encyclopaedia of the Seventh Art. He compares Schubert to certain shots by Ozu or Robert Bresson, who are also capable of expressing the same "feeling of immobility, the sensation of eternity" that he works into his musical performance.

To the expression of deep sorrow in this final work by Schubert, Luisada contrasts the Sonata in C major, D. 840 'Reliquie', in which he finds both a continuity with Haydn's Variations in F minor and 'a climate of frightful sadness' contrasting with 'an angelic luminosity'. Jean-Marc Luisada plays the only two movements from it left by Schubert himself, and omits the version which was completed by his teacher Paul Badura-Skoda.

For the pianist, this incompleteness, such a constant presence in Schubert's works, is not a sign of impotence. Rather, he considers that the composer had 'already said what was essential by revealing the suffering of the moment'. Jean-Marc Luisada highlights the interplay of opposites in this recording, made in the beautiful Salle de l'Arsenal in Metz at the end of winter 2021, when France was under a renewed lockdown due to the global pandemic. Paradoxically, this step back into the interior seems to have helped this most perceptive artist to open up and enjoy greater freedom and inspiration. © François Hudry/Qobuz