Shai Wosner, Piano
Schubert’s Last Sonatas

Saturday, February 24, 2018 | 8:00 pm

Sunday, February 25, 2018 | 3:00 pm

Over the last decade, the brilliant Israeli-born, New York-based pianist Shai Wosner has earned spots as a soloist with the world’s top orchestras, a coveted Avery Fisher Career Grant, laurels from The New York Times and the BBC, and collaborations with some of the world’s brightest young composers. Wosner’s reputation stems in part from his deep devotion to Schubert. A 2011 recording established Wosner as “a Schubertian of unfaltering authority” (Gramophone), while a 2014 collaboration paired works by Schubert with new compositions inspired by his music, written by composer Missy Mazzoli.

Over the course of Wosner’s new two-concert program, Schubert’s Last Sonatas, presented in the round in the intimate Nelson Music Room, he plays Schubert’s final six piano sonatas. In the first concert, Wosner begins with the otherworldly D. 845, the extroverted D. 850, and the serene D. 894, the only three sonatas published during Schubert’s lifetime. In the second concert, he plays Schubert’s great sonata trilogy of 1828 — the dramatic Beethovenian D. 958, the lyrical D. 959, and the vertiginous D. 960 — written just before the composer’s death and published a decade later. Though initially overlooked, these works, which Wosner has called “six thick novels, rich with insight about the human condition,” now rank as landmarks of the solo piano repertoire. Each of these two concerts is ticketed separately.