I love music to make sense and a strong groove is the foundation of musical storytelling. In Romantic music that uses tempo rubato, this means the groove must stretch but not break.
Without going very deep into the compositional structure of this lovely piece, in this video I describe how the groove or metre forms into sections to generate a lovely sense of story in Schubert’s Impromptu in G-flat.
The 2nd movement of Mozart’s Sonata in A minor K310 contrasts intricate lyrical music with a dark dramatic development section. Hear how this late 18th Century fortepiano handles these contrasts in a very different way from the modern piano.