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The Sonata Seminar | The New Yorker

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In 2004, Alex Ross attended the classical pianist’s master class on Schubert’s sonatas at Carnegie Hall.

Save this story Save this story Schubert’s C-Minor Sonata is a violent work—and sadistically difficult to play. Illustration by Istvan Banyai “There are so few notes,” the pianist Leon Fleisher said, “but so many implications.” The setting was a recent master class at Carnegie Hall. Fleisher, the master in question, was leading four young musicians through the mystical landscapes of the late sonatas of Schubert. He was speaking about the Andante movement of Schubert’s B-Flat-Major Sonata, but he might as well have been describing Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier,” or Brahms’s Intermezzos, or any

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