EIF: Sir András Schiff
Queen’s Hall - 11/08/23
The Queen’s Hall recital on the morning of Friday 11th August featured Hungarian-born British pianist Sir András Schiff as not only virtuoso performer, but also genial host, as he introduced a programme of masterworks, whose content was unadvertised prior to the event. Informative and suffused with dry humour (and apart from the obviously essential task of identification), his monologues added immeasurably to the enjoyment of the music.
After a delicately nuanced meditative rendition of the Aria theme from Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’, he revealed that Bach would be featuring prominently in the programme because he is “the greatest composer who ever lived”. “I start every day with Bach, often before breakfast”. “Life is too short to spend any of it listening to bad music”. Fair enough.
As promised, two more Bach works followed: the youthful ‘Capriccio on the departure of his Beloved Brother’ in B flat, witty and episodic, and the mature fugal ‘Ricercar a 3’ from ‘The Musical Offering’, sent by Bach as a polished postscript to the improvisation he had performed on a theme given him by none other than King Frederick the Great of Prussia, when Bach had visited Potsdam. Both displayed a deep devotion to the music of Bach, in all his diverse moods.
Had it not been for the curatorial skills of one Gottfried van Swieten, diplomat and aristocrat, who kept a music library with Bach manuscripts, it is doubtful that composers of the classical period could have benefitted from Bach’s influence. This includes Mozart, whose Fantasia in C minor takes the theme of the Ricercar as its starting point. A compact piece, sternly grave at the beginning and end, but with a sunnier middle section in the major key. Elegantly performed.
In Haydn’s lifetime, and still now we are told, he was more appreciated in Britain, notably London and Oxford, than in Austria and Germany. The first half of the concert closed with two Haydn pieces, his 1794 Variations in F minor, complexly hovering between the major and minor, and his final Sonata No.62 in E flat, a technically challenging piece that Haydn himself probably couldn’t perform, but advances in fortepiano manufacture and technique were afoot in England and he could exploit them. Both got the full Schiff treatment, with flawless articulation, elegant phrasing and a balanced sense of drama and humour.
The second half consisted of only two larger scale works, both in D minor and both featuring recitative for dramatic effect. Back to Bach first, for his monumental Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. This was breathtakingly good with its awe-inspiring structure and sense of gravitas, the piano sounding like an organ at times, and indeed the music is as monumental as the organ Fantasia and Fugue in G minor. The programme concluded with Beethoven’s stormy passionate Sonata No.17 in D minor, ‘The Tempest’, a work which features the first appearance in published music of an instruction to use the sustain pedal. After some whimsical musings on the peculiarities of some pianists’ use of the pedal, András gave it a compelling and characterful reading, much to the delight of the Festival audience,
The performance ran a bit over time but, as he said, “you’re getting good value for money”. Indeed. And what a lovely way to spend a Friday lunchtime.