Virtuoso’s modest exterior hid an unmistakable edge of excitement
Classical Steven Osborne City Halls, Glasgow/bbc Radio 3
Idoubt whether anyone who heard them will ever forget the month of glorious lunchtime chamber concerts streamed and broadcast live from an empty Wigmore Hall last month. In bleak times, they seemed to open a door to hope, and gave the profound spiritual comfort that only great music can. Everyone involved deserves our gratitude.
Heartened by their success, the BBC has gone on to curate a more modestly scaled week of similar events in the City Halls, Glasgow, focused on artists resident in Scotland – today brings a baroque programme from the tenor Thomas Walker and harpsichordist John Butt, and tomorrow will be the turn of the percussionist Colin Currie, who ventures into the exotic sounds of Stockhausen and Xenakis. But yesterday Steven Osborne took us into classic territory.
Ranking alongside Paul Lewis and Stephen Hough at the forefront of his generation of British pianists, Osborne is an extraordinarily versatile talent, as celebrated for his interpretations of Messiaen and modern Russian masters as he is for more mainstream repertory. He’s a modest chap, who eschews fireworks and the grandstand; but there’s an edge of excitement and commitment to his style that means that he never plays it safe or dull. This City Halls recital was devoted to Schubert, a composer of whose music he has made two acclaimed recordings.
After the F minor Impromptu from the second set D935, played at a lively pace with almost startling mercurial clarity, the focus was the epic Sonata in B flat major D960, written two months before the composer’s death and often romanticised as an epic journey into eternity.
The danger for even the greatest pianists addressing this piece is that the first two movements can drift into rapturous meditation at the cost of shape and destination. From the first bars, it was clear that Osborne wasn’t falling into that trap, as the alluring sweetness of the opening subject, countered by ominous trills, gathered animation through daringly held pauses and alterations of tempos. This was a hugely characterful reading that was taut but not constrained.
The Andante, a sombre nocturnal barcarole, continued in a similar vein, compelling attention by emphasising drama rather than indulging in lyricism. The Scherzo brought a change of mood to an impish skittering that honoured the marking “con delicatezza” without turning fey, before moving into a rich exploration of the ambiguities of the Finale. Something hectic could be sensed under the apparently exuberant cartwheels – something that resisted emotional definition, something both playful and sinister.
A brief encore took us forward a century on to a very different emotional plane via a deliciously insouciant arrangement of I Love You, Porg y from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess – a melody worthy of Schubert on which Osborne lavished all his pianistic sensitivity.
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His exploration of the Finale resisted definition – both playful and sinister