Schubert’s final year was marked by growing public acclaim, but also by the gradual deterioration of his health, so that any idea of him becoming Beethoven’s musical successor was to be short-lived. Schubert’s final three piano sonatas of 1828 were completed only weeks before his death, and the last of these, the Sonata in B flat major with its ‘heavenly length’, stands at the summit of Schubert’s works for piano, bringing together the lyrical and monumental characteristics that are most cherished in his music.