Good intentions are simply not good enough (to freely paraphrase Kurt Tucholsky): the arpeggione, a kind of hybrid instrument like a large bowed guitar, never won acceptance among musicians. This curiosity of instrumental engineering would certainly have long since been consigned to oblivion had not Franz Schubert of all people composed his A minor sonata for it.

This three-movement work is now truly immortal, but at the same time presents a problem as an Urtext because the original arpeggion...