Reflections on mortality and moments of magic

ANDRAS SCHIFF Wigmore Hall, W1

IN THE second of his series of three recitals featuring the music of Bach, Bartók, Janácek and Schumann, András Schiff offered a revealing juxtaposition of Bach’s 15 Sinfonias (better known as the Three-part Inventions) interspersed with three short suites by Bartók. If the latter’s Op. 14 Suite, one of his more abstract works (no folk tunes, no programme), neatly complemented the Bach, the similarities were heightened by Schiff ’s objective accounts of the Sinfonias — the deeply introspective F minor aside — with few rubati, fewer ornaments and no pedal.

And for all that Bartók’s Out of Doors Suite may feature the sounds of crickets and frogs, this was a reading stronger in rhythmic definition than in the evocation of the mysteries of Bartók’s characteristic “night music”.

Janácek’s Sonata 1.X.1905, a plangent meditation on a violent death at a Czech nationalist rally on that date, succeeded in invoking the deeper reflections on mortality inherent in the piece. In the first movement of Schumann’s Sonata No. 1 in F sharp minor, and especially in the exquisite slow Aria, there were at last moments of real magic, though the end of the Aria was compromised by over-pedalling, while the clangorous tone of more demonstrative passages was a surprise from this most refined of pianists.