Between my return from Phoenix last night and my departure for San Luis Obispo this afternoon, I managed to squeeze in just enough time to listen to music.

Somehow I’d never heard András Schiff’s ECM cycle of the Beethoven piano sonatas. When it was commercially available, I wasn’t interested. Then I was — but by then it was out-of-print. Took me a while to track down a physical copy, which arrived this morning.

I first listened to Op. 31, no. 1, one of my favorite works by Beethoven. While the recording played, I looked through the box set and came across the last CD in the set, entitled Encores after Beethoven, which suggests a collection of “lollipops”. The program is anything but. Which was no surprise. (My eyebrows would have raised right off my forehead had the disc included Schiff recordings of things like Étincelles and Polka de W. R.)

Schubert’s late Allegretto in C minor, D. 915 is the second track. Compact, moody, and emotionally potent, it arguably overshadows the one Beethoven work on the program (the “Andante favori”). Truly remarkable and original music, composed in the valley of death: Beethoven’s and, imminently, Schubert’s.

Heavy music for a little encore.