Schubert composed his Sonata No. 4 in A minor (D. 537), a work of unabashed Romanticism, in 1817. Whilst the outer movements are highly dramatic in character, the central slow movement features a long and enchanting melody of an almost fragile delicacy. He returned to this melody eleven years later in 1828, using it as the theme of the last movement of the Sonata No. 19 in A major D. 959, his penultimate sonata. This Allegretto is perhaps the most "Schubertian" of all: it is generous, graceful, full of hope despite a weighty melancholy, and always in motion. Schubert’s return to the melody that he had composed when he was twenty years old attests his particular love for it; it was his personal hymn, his secret melody.
