The alternative versions of Schumann’s piano sonatas make revision audible. They invite us to hear how an ending can change the meaning of everything that precedes it.

The last movement of a sonata arrives with an unusual responsibility. It must bring a long span of music to an end, while helping us understand the journey we have already made. Schumann’s Piano Sonata in G minor, Op. 22, places that responsibility in especially clear relief: its first finale and the movement that eventually replaced it offer different answers to the same formal problem.

In 1838 Clara Wieck expressed her enthusiasm for the sonata and encouraged Robert to reconsider its conclusion. The demanding Presto passionato was replaced by a new finale before the work appeared in print in 1839. The episode gives Clara a precise place within the work’s history as an informed reader and performer. It also reminds us that a familiar published text may conceal a substantial history of decisions.

The two finales deserve to be heard as musical propositions. Difficulty is part of the question, but so are density, pacing and the relationship between the closing movement and the opening one. A finale can gather the work’s energy into a concentrated conclusion; it can also enlarge that energy until it threatens to change the proportions of the whole. The distinction affects how the earlier movements are remembered.

Schumann’s F minor Sonata, Op. 14, presents a related problem on a larger documentary scale. It appeared in 1836 as Concert sans Orchestre and in a revised form in 1853 as Grande Sonate. The surviving sources also preserve material associated with a more expansive conception. Here the work’s identity includes changes of title, arrangement of movements and musical text. A catalogue number provides continuity across versions whose experiences of time can differ considerably.

For a performer, this history has practical consequences. An articulation or dynamic indication belongs to a particular reading of the piece; the attractive detail found in another source may carry a different context with it. The task is therefore to understand the text being played, and to make choices that sustain its particular argument. An edition’s preface and critical commentary can be as important to that task as a familiar recording.

Alternative versions also alter the listener’s role. Once another ending has been heard, the customary one becomes a choice again. A point that previously seemed inevitable can be recognised as the outcome of revision. There is pleasure in this newly recovered uncertainty: a work becomes more substantial when its possibilities can be compared, without requiring us to declare one version an embarrassing failure.

Massimiliano Motterle’s recording brings the sonatas into proximity with alternative and unfinished materials. The interest of such a programme lies in the opportunity to hear relationships usually separated by the boundaries of an edition. Schumann’s workshop becomes accessible through sound. The unfinished passage and the replaced movement remain distinct kinds of evidence, each allowing us to ask how a musical thought acquired the form through which we now know it.

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