Paul Lewis (piano): Schubert – Piano Sonata No. 7 in E flat major, D568; Piano Sonata No. 14 in A minor, D784; Piano Sonata No. 17 in D major, D850; Piano Sonata No. 15 in C major, D840; Piano Sonata No. 13 in A major, D664; Piano Sonata No. 16 in A minor, D845
These were two recitals I had very much been looking forward to. I still remember the day, on a cold winter’s morning in January 1975, at a convent in Hertfordshire (we won’t go there……) when some puzzled nuns handed me a large parcel which turned out to be a complete DG LP boxed set of Schubert piano sonatas by Wilhelm Kempff. I still have it, alongside Mitsuko Uchida’s collection of sonatas in MP4 format. I have listened to them all but the ones that have always stayed in the memory have been D664, D784, D894, and then D958. 959, and D960, all with a gentle melancholy. I know very little about piano playing but there are a few pianists who can make music like this sing and create poetry from it. Among the pianists I have heard who to me have this gift are Radu Lupu, Alfred Brendel, Mitsuko Uchida and Paul Lewis.
Paul Lewis is apparently playing the Schubert sonatas not covered in these two concerts next year and, on the evidence of the 2023 offerings, they will be unmissable! Hearing Mitsuko Uchida’s recordings, she casts a dreamy melancholy veil over this music. Paul Lewis is in a way more Beethovenian, with a lot of dynamic contrasts, strong muscular playing and a clarity at the same time very much like his mentor Alfred Brendel. Perhaps the acoustics of St John’s Church sometimes meant the percussive element to some of Lewis’ plating was a bit over-emphasised, but I think what he wanted to show in these two concerts is that, while there is certainly the melancholy, Winterreise-type element to some of these sonatas, there is also tension and anger and energy of indeed a Beethovenian kind. Beyond the familiar D664 and 784 I was most struck by D845, a towering 40-minute piece that I really wasn’t familiar with and which I very much enjoyed. Again, listening to the Uchida version afterwards, Lewis’ performance was a good deal more clangourous in the first and third movements, but his is certainly a valid approach that worked for me. The only sonata I didn’t really warm to was D568, which seemed a bit conventional and ordinary.
Paul Lewis is someone who when performing seems very much in his own world, and often seems removed from the audience he is playing for – it was nice therefore that he gave an encore at the end of the second concert – revealingly of a Beethoven Bagatelle. Beethovens presence seemed very real at these two concerts
John's musical journey 