Third installment of Franz Schubert’s complete piano sonatas, performed by Japanese fortepianist Yasuyo Yano, professor at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences. Recorded in Swizerland with a Christopher Clarke fortepiano.

Yasuyo Yano was born in Tokyo. Her teachers were Midori Matsubara, then Sergio Perticaroli and Carla Giudici at the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Yasuyo Yano has also received precious advice from other famous pianists, such as Jacques Rouvier, Dang Thai Son and Paul Badura-Skoda. Yasuyo Yano now lives in Switzerland where she teaches the piano, fortepiano and chamber music at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. She gives solo recitals and is also a chamber music performer, both on the fortepiano and the modern piano.

Yasuyo Yano tells of her encounter with the fortepiano: “In Venice, in 2001, I played the complete Mozart sonatas for violin and piano together with the violinist Giuliano Carmignola. Andrea Marcon, another eminent Italian musician, told me after one of these concerts that I should consider playing fortepiano. I took his advice and I am today still thankful for it, because working with the fortepiano has opened up entirely new dimensions for me. On the one hand, the fortepiano enables me to imagine and hear how the music must have sounded back in those days, and on the other hand, the fortepiano is quite different to modern pianos, offering a large spectrum for creative leeway with a rich palette of sound colours, a wide range of dynamics and the delicate response of the keyboard to touch. I had not expected all of this! But it was quite a long journey to master the instrument so that I was able to reveal these characteristics – a journey with a wonderful reward as it has led me to Schubert.”