Works by Bach and Mozart to be announced from the stage
I am staying slightly out of Salzburg city centre, towards the north east of the town and near the river. It’s about a 35 minute pleasant walk along the river (not too low, despite the drought), and I took this route before the concert – the Mozarteum is just off the river.
I can’t resist Andras Schiff’s ’announced from the stage’ performances – I went to one earlier in the year at the Wigmore Hall, and I’m going to another in December. As long as he doesn’t play too much Chopin and Liszt, to which I am allergic, I am content to be in (with?) his hands and to enjoy whatever he plays …..even when he plays for as long as he did in this concert, which was just about 3 hours including a 20 minute interval, an astonishingly generous concert (but I guess easier to do in a Festival when people on the whole probably don’t have to worry about last trains). The theme this time was ‘how Bach influenced Mozart’, and while Schiff played some works I knew and some I didn’t, some I enjoyed and some had me losing focus a bit, the other thing about this event is that I learned something as well, and had the chance to hear how close some of Mozart’s music is to Bach’s when you put works side by side. As usual (though not in the Wigmore Hall) Schiff brought his personal Boesendorfer piano, an early 19th century model made a few years after Schubert’s death.
The pieces played were as follows and as far as I can remember:
- A piece unknown to me which Schiff didn’t mention after he played it
- A coupling of the first number of the Bach Musical Offering – Ricercar a 3 – and the Mozart Fantasia – I think C Minor K475 – which uses as its main theme one almost the same as that given to Bach by Frederick the Great
- An extract (s) from what I noted as Bach’s ‘French suite’ (which I think must be Overture in the French Style BWV 831) and Mozart Gigue, possibly K580 but maybe something else as this seems too short to be how I remembered the piece
- Reflecting on the fact that B minor was traditionally the key of death, the B minor prelude and fugue from Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2 and the Mozart Adagio K540, Mozart’s sole B Minor piece of music
- Mozart’s K533 piano sonata but only the first two movements. Schiff said the Rondo was an add-on and not of the same standard
- A set of movements by Bach (I didn’t catch their precise name) ‘in the Italian style of Corelli, Vivaldi and others
- Mozart’s C Minor piano sonata K 457
- There were two generous encores. The first was a Mozart rondo, 3 / 4 waltz like in style, and followed by a piece of what could have been Schubert or Beethoven (it sounded quite familiar) to show how Mozart influenced others after him. The second was the very familiar opening movement of a Mozart piano sonata (I can’t remember what the Koechel number is)
Of all these (I knew the Mozart piano sonatas, the Bach pieces I didn’t recognise apart from the Musical Offering) I probably enjoyed the Mozart piano sonatas the most, as, knowing them well, I could appreciate the skill, the deftness and lightness of touch Schiff was displaying, and the way he could darken or lighten mood by very small changes of pressure on the keyboard or by subtle changes of tempi. Of those pieces I didn’t know well, I appreciated particularly the Mozart Adagio K540, a very profound and unsettling piece. When you put certain Mozart pieces side by side with Bach, you can immediately see the enormous acknowledgement to and use of Bach’s contrapuntal skills, particularly in the pairing at 3 above. No 1, the unknown item, was fascinating – I wish Schiff had said who wrote this. At first I thought this was someone mid-way between Bach and Mozart – perhaps one of Bach’s sons? It must have been JS Bach, I concluded in the end, but very far from how we would normally see the range of his music – much lighter and simpler in style
As ever Mr Schiff delivered his introductions and link explanations with humour and self-deprecation. A very fine concert!!
John's musical journey 