Sir Andras Schiff weaves intimate spell
IT’S been more than 20 years between drinks but Sydney finally got to see and hear the great Sir Andras Schiff gave a one-off piano recital in the Sydney Opera House concert hall.
Wentworth Courier
Don't miss out on the headlines from Wentworth Courier. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Powerful songs set sail for Omega
- Top-notch young veteran pianist
- ASQ mix old with the new
- Borodins on their home ground
IT’S been more than 20 years between drinks but a Sydney audience finally got to see and hear a master of the art when the great Sir Andras Schiff gave a one-off gala recital for Musica Viva in the Sydney Opera House concert hall.
The Hungarian-born English pianist is universally acknowledged as one of the all-time greats, but the 64-year-old cut a modest figure in his three-piece charcoal grey suit with watch chain and black bow tie.
He was ready to talk to his audience and share some wisdom and gave a generous four encores to top off a thoughtfully devised program based around the late piano pieces of Johannes Brahms.
The two parts of the program were performed without pause, and Schiff had something to say about “the interesting history of applause” before he started.
“Music starts with silence and ends in silence. Sometimes it’s good that we can share the silence,” he said, adding that he did not wish to tell the audience what to do. “Whistling has become popular in some countries — I hope it doesn’t here. It can mean something else,” he quipped.
His audience was obedient to a fault, holding their applause and wrapped in the musical spell the maestro wove.
POIGNANT
He said he wanted to perform a program of Brahms and those composers he admired. Brahms once owned the score of the opening piece on the program, Robert Schumann’s Ghost Variations, the composer’s last work which he wrote immediately before being committed to an asylum for the final two years of his life after trying to kill himself by jumping into the freezing river Rhine.
The five short variations on a theme he believed had been delivered to him by “angels” in his disturbed dreams of demons and ghosts makes for poignant listening.
Schiff’s program was built around the relationship of keys — the Schumann was in E-flat major as was the first of Brahms’ Three Intermezzi which immediately followed. This relationship also needed silence to be fully appreciated, Schiff told us, like a sommelier pointing out the finer qualities of a vintage wine.
Schiff creates a strong sense intimacy with his audience, which he sees as a “duty”, even when playing in an auditorium the size of which Brahms could never have imagined.
Like a burmese cat, his musical muscles come wrapped in silk.
His hands and gestures are graceful and even the most acrobatic passage work is carried off with grace and aplomb, almost caressing the keys in the slower moments. There’s none of the hammering you might get from other players.
Like a burmese cat, his musical muscles come wrapped in silk.
His performance of Mozart’s uncharacteristically dark Rondo in A minor was wonderful — a miracle of controlled fluency as if the music was arriving fresh from the page, or more precisely directly from the fertile imagination of the composer himself.
Brahms famously said: “Study Bach, there you will find everything” and Schiff’s reputation is largely based on his exemplary recordings of this composer’s work.
He chose the great Prelude and Fugue in B minor from the Well Tempered Clavier to open the second half. This was delivered with minimal use of the pedals and with a spacious clarity that brought out the intricate counterpoint.
The Four Pieces for piano, Brahms’ farewell to the instrument, followed and the transition from the Bach fugue to the B minor opening piece, for this listener, seemed to throw a new light on the work in which Brahms uses plenty of dissonance.
DOGGED
Dedicated to the love of his life Clara Schumann, it shows that for all the criticism of the composer’s musical conservatism in his last years he was looking at new ways of treating harmony.
The greatness of Beethoven dogged Brahms’ entire career — he kept putting off writing his first symphony (rather cruelly tagged Beethoven’s 10th) — saying that following in his footsteps “transcends one’s strength”.
So it was appropriate that after the Rhapsody in E-flat major from the set, Schiff should end with Beethoven’s Les Adieux sonata in the same key.
After this perfectly judged reading, Schiff returned to the stage for the first of his encores, Schubert’s Hungarian Melody.
“Schubert wasn’t Hungarian, but I will play you something very Hungarian,” Schiff said after the next curtain call, and he gave us Bartok’s Rondo No. 1 followed, by the Swineherd’s Dance from For Children. These pieces must have a special meaning for him, particularly now that he refuses to play in the country of his birth after speaking out against its government.
He finished the evening with what might almost be his signature tune — the Aria from Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
DETAILS
● CONCERT: Sir Andras Schiff
● WHERE: Sydney Opera House Concert Hall
● WHEN: Monday, October 22.