Unfinished

Organising a Piano Solo Concert for Neil Crossland arises purely out of coincidence. Yet it also seems like a continuation of my little sentiments with the term ‘unfinished’…

Having known Neil for years, his musicianship is one of which I admire and trust. Nonethelss, the idea of him completing the entire lot of 7 unfinished piano sonatas of Franz Schubert still fascinates me from inside out.

Difficulty aside, how much passion and sentiments are needed to be self-driven into completing a set of unfinished piano sonatas like these… I was very moved, and I still am.

Infact, my very first encounter with ‘unfinished’ was the first movement of Schubert’s Symphony No. 8.

I clearly recalled those emotional entanglement on my first close encounter with this movement - alternating my mood between strolling on the cloud and walking in the thunderstorm had, for some reasons, touched me so much that I eventually sat on the floor and broke into tears. I was totally unprepared for that repeated back and forth journey between the cheerful melody and the melancholic notes. It was tedious. And I remembered feeling so annoyed with this movement and so annoyed with Schubert; yet at the same time, the entire composition was speechlessly beautiful and utterly complete!

With his ‘unfinished’, Franz Schubert had unintentionally sealed the fate of his unfinished masterpieces. And in our era, unfinished matters don’t seem uncommon too, for many people.

Unfinished matters, acting like a connector, as well as a junction, seem to be putting together what will happen in the future and what had happened in the past. And this could well appear to be so interestingly moving – it, on one hand, behaves like an answer; yet on the other hand, leading to more answers.

What happens at this moment could well be the bearing of what had once happened; it could also be the underlying clues and codes of the many many future possible happenings…

I am thankful… and I am also looking forward… :)