Paul Lewis, BIF, St John’s Church Buxton, 6/7/24

Schubert: Piano Sonatas D958, 959, 960

This is the first time I have sat through a live programme of Schubert’s last 3 sonatas. It is quite an exhausting though also a fascinating and rewarding experience…..I felt drained by the end. Paul Lewis seemed as fresh at the end of the concert as at the beginning. He is rather a sphinx-like figure on stage – perhaps matter of fact in the way he shows no particular facial response to the audience as he comes on stage or in response to applause, but seemingly completely absorbed in the world of the composer he is interpreting. The most memorable D960 I’ve heard hitherto live was by Alfred Brendel during his farewell UK tour in something like 2012. The other two I’m not sure I’ve ever heard live before.

Another of Paul Lewis’ many gifts, following on from the previous day, is to make the piano ‘sing’ – a way of making the notes on this percussive instrument slide into one another as a human voice would.  And a further sign of his artistry is the ability to offer a wide range of dynamics – he can keep back the true fff sounds to the most climactic parts of each work. Sometimes the piano falls back to a whisper – but not affectedly. These features were abundantly present in these performances.

The first half of the concert in particular was a marathon – 1 hour, 10 minutes. I found the performances of the first two sonatas slightly more engaging, within a frame of very high standards indeed, than D960. I think this is to do more with the quality of my listening than the playing, but perhaps it was the case that at times D960 felt marginally too fast, particularly the third movement, which also sounded fractionally too heavy, , and the second theme of the finale, which I have always heard as consolatory but which here felt slightly edgy.

Highlights for me were:

• the finale of D958 – a mad tarantella-like piece, perhaps more like a Dance of Death than anything else, and with, like the finale of Schubert’s 9th symphony, around the corner a Don Giovanni/Commendatore knocking on the door. Lewis’ playing here was extraordinarily deft and delicate
• the remarkable central section of the slow movement of D959, harmonies and melody suddenly caught up in a whirlwind, notes flung around without connection in a vortex
• the lovely finale of D959 – I love the bit near the end where the main theme gets broken up (almost as if the composer is too weary and frail to carry on) butt then manages to regroup and carries on to the end; it’s a supremely moving moment
• the sombre slow movement of D960, taken at just the right speed by Lewis (I have heard it too slow and portentous -the recording I have of Mitsuko Uchida’s performance is a bit like that)

This will definitely be one of the concerts on my long list for the top ten performances of the year