Schubert: Piano Music, Vol. 5

The great A minor of D845 was the first of his piano sonatas that Schubert made any effort to have published. Written in the spring of 1825, there is an air of defiance about the writing, perhaps the composer's response to his terminal diagnosis. D894 dates from some eighteen months later and-despite his ever-worsening health-is a rare beacon of tranquillity among the works of this period.