Ivan Hewett's Classic 50 No 5: Schubert But that's only one side of Schubert. Unlike the echt 20th century existentialist, who's isolated through-and-through, Schubert knew all about the other side of the human coin: friendship, chasing girls, getting drunk. He was grounded in ordinary human life, and a lot of his colossal output is in convivial "social" forms that we don't value much any more, such as part-songs for singing round the hearth. This is Schubert's secret. He marries the familiar, the ordinary and the sociable with an unflinching portrayal of the loneliness at the human core. One piece combines all that with something extra - an evocation of a long-dead Baroque musical style. It's the fourth of the Moment Musicaux ("Musical Moments"), a set of six piano miniatures written mostly in the last two years of Schubert's life. Like many of Schubert's pieces, it gives a special pathos to one of music's archetypal patterns. This is the three-part ABA form which every pop song has: first we hear one sort of music, followed by something different, followed by a return of the opening music. In Schubert's piece we hear the A section as an outer, "normal" shell, which conceals something tender, private and mysterious within. 00.00 The piece begins just like a Bach two-part Invention, with the right hand moving twice as fast as the left (this is a reminder of how history-conscious classical music was becoming). In this great performance from Mitsuko Uchida there's a delicate, hesitant quality. It forewarns us that the piece will soon roam far away from Bach. 00.25 That process begins already, but still the running semiquavers keep going. 00.42 The music seems to say "no" to that hint of warmth and goes back to Bach-like severity (very severe in this performance). The music seems to be heading for a quiet minor-key ending. 1.28 After a pause we hear one of Schubert's magical, unexpected turns to the major mode. But as always, this turn to the sun is shadowed by clouds, at 1.46. What started out as an idyll becomes assertive and occasionally angry. Even so, this whole section feels like a refuge from the beginning. 4.51 The anxious running semiquavers of the opening come back. We hear the whole opening section again, leading to a pause at 6.16 6.17 A brief memory of the happy idyll flits over the music, but the ending is stern. Schubert Impromptu in G flat This is the most famous of Schubert's late set of piano pieces called Impromptus. They were composed in 1827, the year before he died. It's been used countless times on romantic film soundtracks, but its innocent, sad-happy quality doesn't change (great musical works have this quality of being perpetually chaste. Keat's famous description of a Grecian urn, "Thou still unravished bride of quietness" could equally apply to this piece). It's difficult to float that melody over the ripple of accompanying notes, but pianist Aldo Ciccolini does it beautifully. Nachtviolen Even more exquisite than that Impromptu is this tiny little song, its title meaning "Night violets," one of over 600 songs Schubert composed in his short life. The poem, by Johann Mayrhofer (a friend of Schubert's who had the very unpoetic job of government censor) is a typical Romantic effusion. He imagines the violets are like dark soulful eyes, "gazing earnestly and in silence into the mild spring air." Young singer Elizabeth Watts captures its lovely innocent quality. Moments Musicaux No 3 in F minor This little piece, the smallest of the Moments Musicaux, is a perfect illustration of how in Schubert simplicity and subtlety go together. The mood of the opening is so easy to grasp, so hard to describe. And that move to a nearby major key at 00.25 - is it a move to happiness or sadness? Pianist Alfred Brendel is clearly moved, too - you can hear him humming in the background.