LDV78.9

27 MICHEL DALBERTO Is that observation also valid for the notion of repetition? Absolutely. For Schubert, repetition is a fundamental and consubstantial part of his musical thought. Because he systematically looks back to earlier material in his music. Just listen to his Winterreise . This is a paradox: Schubert is searching for the moment in the past when he suffered, and thereby making himself his centre of interest. Yet his music speaks to every one of us. Beethoven, on the other hand, rarely looks back and always thinks bigger than himself. In fact, the first movement of the Pathétique Sonata seems totally open to the future, while the final rondo resolutely turns back to the past, a ‘punctuation’ that consists of varied developments – very ‘Haydnesque’, but it’s Haydn crossed with Beethoven. It isn’t a fault not to play all the repeats in his music systematically, because his goal is quite simple: to speak to the whole of humanity in a universal language.