Schubert - Arpeggione Sonata in A minor (played on the arpeggione), D. 821 (1824)

Sonata in A minor for arpeggione and piano, D. 821 (1824) I. Allegro moderato [0:00] II. Adagio [11:37] III. Allegretto [15:51] A work of chamber music by Austrian composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828). This sonata is very well known in transcriptions for cello and piano or viola and piano, but it is rarely played in its original version for arpeggione and piano. The arpeggione is a now defunct six-stringed bowed instrument with frets (essentially a bowed guitar), and Schubert’s sonata is the only substantial composition for the instrument, which had been invented just one year earlier. Schubert’s friend Vincenz Schuster, a virtuoso of the arpeggione, commissioned the sonata. This recording was made between 2000 and 2001 using a copy by Henning Aschauer of a 19th-century arpeggione, part of the collection of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, and the 1824 Conrad Graf pianoforte from the Beethoven House in Bonn. Arpeggione: Alfred Lessing Piano: Jozef De Beenhouwer