Andrew Brownell, an internationally acclaimed pianist who has performed worldwide the past two decades, is scheduled to play the first in a trio of concerts featuring the final piano sonatas of Franz Schubert. Brownell’s concert is scheduled at 7 p.m. March 10 at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center. (Publicity photo by Nathan Russell)

Andrew Brownell, an internationally acclaimed pianist who has performed worldwide the past two decades, is scheduled to play the first in a trio of concerts featuring the final piano sonatas of Franz Schubert. Brownell’s concert is scheduled at 7 p.m. March 10 at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center. (Publicity photo by Nathan Russell)

Springing forward with a famous farewell

Trio of piano concerts at JACC highlight Schubert’s last sonatas

If you had four months to live, what memento of your life would you create?

A trio of piano sonatas was Franz Schubert’s artistic farewell, and the compositions now considered among the most significant of his works are scheduled to be performed in a trio of concerts starting next Friday at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center.

The first at 7 p.m. March 10 features international award-winner Andrew Brownell visiting from the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas, the second at 7 p.m. March 17 is by local performer Sue Kazama and the finale at 3 p.m. March 19 by former local resident Jon Hays who organized the series.

Andrew Brownell, an internationally acclaimed pianist who has performed worldwide the past two decades, is scheduled to play the first in a trio of concerts featuring the final piano sonatas of Franz Schubert. Brownell’s concert is scheduled at 7 p.m. March 10 at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center. (Publicity photo by Nathan Russell)

Andrew Brownell, an internationally acclaimed pianist who has performed worldwide the past two decades, is scheduled to play the first in a trio of concerts featuring the final piano sonatas of Franz Schubert. Brownell’s concert is scheduled at 7 p.m. March 10 at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center. (Publicity photo by Nathan Russell)

“I tried to mostly leave it up to the performers what they want to perform,” Hays said this week. “But with this set of three concerts there a friend and somebody I know in Juneau who asked me can you play these late Schubert sonatas for a few years now.”

Hays, who grew up in Juneau and helped raise money for the piano now at the JACC, said this is the fourth concert series dedicated to highlighting the instrument. He also wanted to feature outside and local musicians, in addition to performing one of the sonatas himself.

“I knew I could not play all of them,” he said. “That would be an hour and 40 minutes of music.”

Schubert’s last sonatas — D 958, 959 and 960 — were composed while he was in the final stages of a long illness between May and September of 1828, dying soon afterward at the age of 31. An article published in Interlude in 2019 notes “these were the first works of the kind he had composed following the death of Beethoven, a composer whom Schubert much admired, and his last three piano sonatas all pay tribute to Beethoven.”

“Freed from the shadow of Beethoven, Schubert finds a new voice,” the article by Frances Wilson states. “Like Beethoven’s final sonatas, Schubert’s late works seem to communicate a sense of acceptance (but never resignation) combined with an ’incompleteness,’ as if he had much more to say, and the music’s propulsive driving force, its almost obsessive creative energy, is a transcendent negation of disorder and death whose overriding message is fundamentally positive.”

Hays said he chose the second composition — Sonata in A major, D. 959 — as a personal preference for his finale concert.

“It opens up sort of majestically,” he said. “It has a killer slow movement that has this descent almost into inner turmoil that was almost unprecedented at the time.”

He said Kazama is familiar with the third in the series — Sonata in B♭ major, D. 960 — and he asked her to participate because “she’s just one of the best pianists living in town right now for classical music.”

That left the first piece — Sonata in C minor, D. 958 — for Brownell’s opening concert. A pianist since the age of 4 who was born in Portland, Oregon, he has spent more than two decades as a solo and chamber music performer in North America, Europe and elsewhere. He is now a faculty member at the Butler School of Music, and said in a phone interview this week he performs as a visiting musician about 10 to 12 times a year.

While his spring schedule is typically packed with academic activities including working with his students as they approach graduation, he said he was talked into his first trip to Alaska through a mutual friend of Hays.

“I learned this Schubert about 17 years ago,” Brownell said. “These last three Schubert sonatas are very standard repertoire (for experienced pianists). It’s not a new work for me, fortunately.”

Brownell, as with the other two pianists, will play additional compositions he selected as part of his program, including a short set by Alexander Scriabin, a controversial Russian pianist during the late 19th and early 20th centuries,

“That was something I was working on in the fall (and) I was sure that was going to end up the program,” Brownell said. “All of that is C-sharp and D-flat, and I picked some other pieces in the same key. The consideration in that case was made because of the key relationships because it all fits together.”

An opera piece by French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau that Brownell said he heard in November is also part of his planned concert in Juneau.

The March 10 performance also is the release date of his album “Shades of Night,” described in a label announcement as “a potpourri of exquisite gems with Romantic overtones, though the music ranges from the baroque to the present day.” Numerous composers are featured from Beethoven to Debussy to Schumann — but not Schubert. Brownell said he’ll bring copies of the album for his scheduled three-day visit to Juneau, although he isn’t sure what he’ll spend his time doing here beyond signing them after the concert

“I don’t know enough about the place to have a bucket list,” he said.

• Contact reporter Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com

Jon Hays performs works by Beethoven during a Juneau Piano Series concert in October of 2022 at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center. Hays is scheduled to perform another concert as part of the series on March 19. (Screenshot from Juneau Piano Series video recording)

Jon Hays performs works by Beethoven during a Juneau Piano Series concert in October of 2022 at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center. Hays is scheduled to perform another concert as part of the series on March 19. (Screenshot from Juneau Piano Series video recording)

More in News

Michael Penn / Juneau Empire File
The Aurora Borealis glows over the Mendenhall Glacier in 2014.
Aurora Forecast

Forecasts from the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute for the week of March. 19

Students dance their way toward exiting the Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé gymnasium near the end of a performance held before a Gold Medal Basketball Tournament game between Juneau and Hydaburg. (Ben Hohenstatt / Juneau Empire)
Over $2,500 raised for Tlingit language and culture program during Gold Medal performance

A flurry of regionwide generosity generated the funds in a matter of minutes.

Legislative fiscal analysts Alexei Painter, right, and Conor Bell explain the state’s financial outlook during the next decade to the Senate Finance Committee on Friday. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Empire)
Legislators eye oil and sales taxes due to fiscal woes

Bills to collect more from North Slope producers, enact new sales taxes get hearings next week.

The FBI Anchorage Field Office is seeking information about this man in relation to a Wednesday bank robbery in Anchorage, the agency announced Thursday afternoon. Anyone with information regarding the bank robbery can contact the FBI Anchorage Field Office at 907-276-4441 or tips.fbi.gov. Tips can be submitted anonymously.  (FBI)
FBI seeks info in Anchorage bank robbery

The robbery took place at 1:24 p.m. on Wednesday.

Kevin Maier
Sustainable Alaska: Climate stories, climate futures

The UAS Sustainability Committee is hosting a series of public events in April…

Reps. Tom McKay, R-Anchorage, and Andi Story, D-Juneau, offering competing amendments to a bill increasing the per-student funding formula for public schools by $1,250 during a House Education Committee meeting Wednesday morning. McKay’s proposal to lower the increase to $150 was defeated. Story’s proposal to implement an increase during the next two years was approved, after her proposed amounts totalling about $1,500 were reduced to $800.
Battle lines for education funding boost get clearer

$800 increase over two years OKd by House committee, Senate proposing $1,348 two-year increase

A call for a joint session of the Alaska State Legislature to cast a vote that would reject recently-approved salary increases for legislators and top executive branch officials is made by State House Speaker Cathy Tilton, R-Wasilla, during a press conference Tuesday. Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, rejected the joint session in a letter to Tilton on Wednesday. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Empire)
House efforts to nix legislative pay raises hit Senate roadblock

Call for a joint session rejected by upper chamber, bills to overturn pay hikes may lack support

A simulated photo shows the tailings stack and other features of Hecla Greens Creek Mine under the most aggressive of four alternatives for expanding the mine in an environmental impact assessment published Thursday by the U.S Forest Service. The tailings stack is modestly to drastically smaller in the other alternatives. The public comment period for the study is from March 24 to May 8. (U.S. Forest Service)
New study digs into alternatives for Greens Creek Mine expansion

Public comment starts Friday on four options that could extend mine’s life up to 40 years

This image shows the Juneau Lions Club Gold Medal Basketball Tournament's logo. The club is looking for submissions of logos for the historic tournament's 75th anniversary. The winning artist will receive a $250 prize. (Screenshot)
Take your shot at a Gold Medal logo

Upcoming milestone prompts call for art.

Most Read