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This is a very familiar piece (to piano aficionados, anyway) \u2014 but you\u2019ll find Don\u2019s performance a little refreshingly unfamiliar. It\u2019s not a wild departure from custom, but there\u2019s just a subtle tip in the balance in his performance that makes the feeling of the piece quite different.

In the last entry I mentioned the question of foreground and background. When most pianists play this piece, they put the right hand squarely in the foreground: what you hear is a series of speedy cascades down, a fun bit of finger gymnastics. But when Don plays it, he balances foreground between the left and the right, and what emerges is the slower underlying chord progression. Instead of a nervously flitting thing, it becomes a smoothly unfolding one. That reading brings us to what is to me the essential nature of Schubert: a tiny thing with a vast interior, a world opening from a single moment.

\n\n\n\n\n\nFranz Schubert\n\n\n\n\u25b6\ufe0f\nImpromptu D899 No 4 (a.k.a. Op 90 No 4, in A flat minor)\n\n\nDonald Betts, piano\n\n\n\n\n\n\u2b07\ufe0f\nDownload\n\n\n(8:39 / 10.4 M)\n\n\n\n

There is one more recording from Don\u2019s living room I\u2019ll post. After that, he recently made two more in the concert hall that are quite special that I\u2019d like to share with you.