Okay, it’s Schubert’s birthday. No question what I should be writing about. I confess it requires a great deal of focus not to pull another bait-and-switch and just make it all about Alfredo Casella.

Instead, here’s another composer, Benjamin Britten, with Mstislav Rostropovich, to perform Schubert’s “Arpeggione Sonata.”

Mov’t. I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AonBUbPkthc
Mov’t. II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFBAVF93ve8
Mov’t. III https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY9qpHg3TBk

If you’re not familiar with the arpeggione (and who is these days?), it was an instrument invented around 1823. It had six strings, fretted and tuned like a guitar, but it was played with a bow, like a cello. By the time Schubert’s sonata saw publication in 1871, it was already long defunct.

Schubert’s masterful sonata is the only substantial work to have been written for the instrument, but the piece was recognized too late to rescue the arpeggione from extinction. These days, the work is almost always performed on the cello.

Happy birthday, Franz Schubert (1797-1828).

PHOTO: Berndt Bohman, principal cellist of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, playing a modern arpeggione, made by Osamu Okumura, president of the Arpeggione Society Japan. Note the absence of an end pin.