Schiff ’s solemnity puts a downer on a night that ended with a flourish

András Schiff

Each passing year makes Sir András Schiff ever more one of the elder statesmen of the piano. In terms of his stature and reputation, that is only natural, yet the Hungarianborn British pianist has also consciously cultivated that position.

Looking older now than his 64 years, he exudes an aura of solemnity whenever he steps onto the stage to play, and he is received with reverence everywhere – nowhere more so than by the Wigmore Hall audience, always ready to worship at the feet of its favourites.

Here in his latest Wigmore appearance, for a programme built around late Brahms, Schiff discouraged applause between works, even when switching between composers. Not so much aiming for hushed religiosity as an intimate, drawing room-like experience, he angled the piano (a mellow Bosendörfer) so that more of the audience than usual could see the keyboard. Or was he turning his back to us? With Schiff it is sometimes hard to be sure, but one doesn’t go to a concert to look over the shoulder, as it were, of a musician communing with himself. It was at least half an hour into the programme before Schiff ventured anything louder – or softer – than a mezzo-forte, and the mood was monochrome.

Late Brahms, represented here in the Opp. 117, 118 and 119 sets of pieces, does of course suggest some sort of a summing up, but this music has an autumnal glow that was all but absent. In fact there was little colour in these short pieces, and the lullaby that opens the Three Intermezzos (Op. 117) was very matter of fact.

The middle one of this set sounded only quietly agitated, and the final piece became a ghostly picture of death and transfiguration.

Had Schiff stopped there, it might have been possible to see this as an interesting, if somewhat severe, interpretation of these musical gems. But he ploughed on. Despite the first of the Six Piano Pieces (Op. 118) being tagged with the instruction “appassionato”, it was resolutely measured; the swagger of this set’s Ballade was also a little compromised, though the hymnlike aspect of the Romanze came across with striking warmth. The opening Intermezzo of the Four Piano Pieces (Op. 119) sounded more etiolated than ever, leaving one to conclude that Brahms is not Schiff ’s natural repertoire. For all its shortcomings, this was at least an intellectually interesting programme: Schiff combined his Brahms with late – or at least serious and valedictory – music by the great masters Brahms worshipped most.

He prefaced everything with Schumann’s Ghost Variations, the composer’s last work, written around the time of his attempt to drown himself in the Rhine. With its obvious and understandable flaws, it is a work that needs sympathetic championship, but all Schiff did in unfolding it so laconically was to underline Schumann’s fragility of mind. Schiff also made Mozart (the Rondo in A minor, K511) sound like Brahms, and by meandering through Bach (the B minor Prelude and Fugue from Book 1 of the Well-tempered Clavier) he took introspection to new heights.

Then something happened. Allowing a little applause after signing off the last Brahms piece, Schiff seemed liberated and delivered the final segment of the evening as if it was a different concert.

Beethoven’s Les Adieux Sonata suddenly burst out full of colour and Romantic sweep. There was even wit in the exhilarating finale, something he had missed entirely a little earlier in the Brahms that had been marked “giocoso”.

Too late to save the whole evening, Schiff ’s marvellous Beethoven at least blew the cobwebs away.