Текст песни Эмиль и Елена Гилельс - Franz Schubert, Fantasia in F minor,Op.103,D940

Schubert Fantasia in F minor

I often wondered what was more difficult for this lonely, poor man, brilliant and unknown composer: to write a symphony for several dozen musicians or a fantasy for piano in four hands?
Symphony is understandable. You need to prescribe the parties of many instruments, combine them together, find people who will perform all this.
And four hands are just two people. It would seem so easy: to find another one. But he is not, and Schubert still writes fantasy in four hands.
He had a very nondescript position. Only friends knew about his works, for whom he arranged musical evenings. His symphonies began to be performed only many years after his death.
But while Schubert is still alive, he writes a work that he will never perform.
The fantasy begins gently, intimately, from a dark room with one burning candle, a room of a useless person, filled with thoughts, sometimes light and sad - the notes seem to sparkle and shimmer, phrases, terribly similar, smoothly flow into one another, as if he admires them, holding his breath, he takes it with trembling hands and examines it from one side, then from the other, like a child taking out hidden treasures from a casket while parents sleep - sometimes anxious and frightened. So they alternated, interrupting each other - where should he hurry?
Fantasy in four hands.
Or maybe he exists, this second performer? Rude, not asked, he appears suddenly, out of nowhere, in quiet hours of loneliness, and he must drop something. Schubert shudders, involuntarily shudders from a pungent smell or an ugly scar or just an angry, hating look from a stranger, but in a hurry to invite him - this is unnecessary, because an unknown guest was already at his home - to sit at the table, offer tea, ask how he got there. All this absurd vanity only irritates the stranger, he flares up, turns purple, insults Schubert with swear words, feeling his power over him. Then he agrees to a meal and eats and drinks for a long time, noisily. After waiting for the guest to be satisfied, Schubert takes out the notes and hands it to him. This is a light, cheerful piece written the day before for piano four hands.
The guest painstakingly studies the notes, scolds, criticizes. Later they sit down at the piano, the stranger coughs twice noisily, and after a pause they start playing. Now this quick play doesn't look easy or fun. In it one can feel the anger, the mockery of the guest, the desire to destroy, gut everything that is bright in this play, Schubert's nervousness, a pounding heart, the fear of not being in time, to break loose. He is trying to return to that state of lightness, the state that befell him when he wrote. And at times he succeeds, but the stranger catches up and mercilessly squeezes all his strength out of him, in a frantic rhythm carrying Schubert along his own notes, like a blind, weak. They are playing out.
And then the stranger's gaze falls on other notes. The very treasures dear to his heart that Schubert admired alone.
Now the guest wishes to play these. Schubert hesitates, but feels he has no right to refuse. And they start to play. Gentle and sad, as he dreamed just a few minutes ago. And the notes sparkle, shimmer, and phrases, from the depths of the soul, smoothly flow into one another.
Then the terrible begins. One stranger plays, and Schubert starts in a silent scream. He can't do anything. In the play of a stranger, incomplete, not the main one, voiceless, there is empty space for Schubert's voice. He asks to stop, he begs, but the stranger moves on, and his play, rude, destructive, fills the room. Iridescent, delicate notes somewhere above, break into many fragments. And the stranger continues to destroy and destroy, after which he just as suddenly disappears.
And only Schubert remains, stunned and broken. He collects the notes, rakes up the pieces, and blows out the candle.

Alexey Notary

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