Professor Tovey’s Sunday Concert

There are no programme notes printed in the programme for this recital.  

The sonata in C by Schubert was included in concerts given by Donald Tovey on a tour of the United States in 1928.  The reviews of the concert on January 11, 1928 in New York City included references to the programme note relating to the unfinished Schubert work, provided for the occasion by Professor Tovey: 

"The Herald Tribune" Jan 12, 1928
"In the Schubert sonata Professor Tovey provided 30 measures to complete the third movement, while he omitted the unfinished finale, which, he noted on the program, is "out of touch with the sublime style of the rest of the work."  The same note told of his service for the third movement; the music itself did not, as there was nothing in the Schubertian thirty bars supplied by the English musician to suggest that they had not always been part of the sonata."

"The Brooklyn Eagle" Jan 12, 1928
"The Schubert sonata rarely appears on concert programmes and is relatively little known.  Of its four intended movements, three were given completely with the final 30 bars of the Menuetto graciously supplied by Mr Tovey to round it off.  "The Finale," to quote the program notes, "breaks off at the beginning of its development section, and it is doubtful whether Schubert would have cared to finish it, as it is out of touch with the style of the rest of the work."

"The Telegram"
"Donald Francis Tovey, the eminent professor-pianist, began the second recital of his Town Hall series yesterday afternoon with that sonata in C major called "Relique," which Schubert composed three years before his death but whose minuet and final rondo he neglected to complete.  People do not shed bitter unavilaing tears over the unfinished piano sonatas of this master as they do over the famous and much-mauled symphonic torso and nobody offers prizes for their completion.  Neither is it a matter of fireside knowledge that fragmentary sonatas, far from being evidences of tragic frustration, weighed none too heavily on Schibert's conscience... Professor Tovey merits the gratitude of musicians for recalling to mind this little regarded sonata - a work of extraordinary moods and rigged feature of troubled and passionate flights ... "