Beethoven Piano Sonatas Op 109, 100, and 111; Andras Schiff, piano
A lovely morning offering from Andras Schiff. The RAH was packed – there must have been 10 times a standard Wigmore Hall audience in there!
Schiff began with 2 unannounced Bach pieces; I remember in his very readable and recommendable autobiographical notes that he said he began his musical work-outs every day with Bach as a kind of mental clearing-out, or thought-sanitising before practising, and that was presumably the intention here. The pieces I knew but couldn’t place- maybe from the Well Tempered Klavier?
The performance of the Beethoven sonatas was the best I’ve heard live. Sometimes when I’ve listened to these works in concert, there’s so much going on that the textures seem a little muddy. Here there was a wonderful clarity, with the left hand often floating over the top of the turbulence. There was also the very real sense of line in the way the slow movements were played and the clarity with which you could hear the ‘theme’ amid the ‘variations’ where this was he movement form. And the delicacy of phrasing was very noticeable at time – the tiny holding back at points of a note.
A very fine concert, all told.
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