PIANIST LEWIS SET TO PLAY QUARTET OF PERFORMANCES
Vancouver Recital Society favourite to shine spotlight on a dozen of Schubert's sonatas
Paul Lewis
When: May 11, 13, 15 and 17, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Vancouver Playhouse, 600 Hamilton St., Vancouver Tickets: vanrecital.com
The Vancouver Recital Society has enjoyed a spectacular season of delights and surprises, including the Canadian debut of mezzo soprano Ema Nikolovska and the final instalment of the Danish String Quartet's Doppelganger project.
Something of a grand finale is in store for mid-May — not a single recital, but a quartet of intimate performances by VRS favourite, pianist Paul Lewis. And, like the Danish Quartet's project, this is all about Franz Schubert, in this instance his piano sonatas.
It's hardly the first time the VRS has shone the spotlight on the composer. Some seasons ago we got a grand Schubertiade focused on the later chamber music of this most Viennese of classical era composers. Lewis's project is a keyboard sonatas-only proposition: a dozen of Schubert's 21 piano sonatas — from D. 537, created in 1817 by the 20-year-old composer, through to the heart-rending trilogy of late sonatas — a rather meaningless term, since he died aged just 31 — on the final evening of this mini-festival.
Lewis made his North American debut for the VRS in 2000, and has been a regular, much appreciated visitor ever since. He's inclined to serious programs that put quality before technical flash. And his recent Schubert performances and recordings have garnered the sort of critical acclaim most artists only dream of.
Lewis's long relationship with Vancouver has paid significant dividends: he knows the Playhouse and its acoustic well and, even more important, he knows the piano he will be working on. Indeed, he was involved in the choice of the VRS's Hamburg Steinway, an instrument scaled to the Playhouse and selected for its subtlety and tone.
Given 21 sonatas to choose from, Lewis's selection is telling, a carefully structured presentation of what will be an epic musical voyage. In an interview with Anson Yeung for the online classical journal Interlude, he explained how Schubert's work changed in 1823 following his first health crisis, just after the creation of his most extroverted keyboard work, the Wanderer Fantasy.
In his first evening Lewis offers the audience a sampler, an early sonata written in 1817, a sonata composed in 1823 and a later work dating from 1825. Lewis's second concert features two further works composed in 1825, with an earlier work in between. His third concert revisits a pair of sonatas created in 1817 and contrasts them with the Sonata in G major D. 894 dating from 1826, a harbinger of the trilogy of late sonatas. Lewis ends the concert series with the three monumental sonatas written just weeks before the composer's death.
Lewis's game plan is masterly. Scorning straightforward chronological order, his programs are instead delicately structured to demonstrate changes in focus and perspective over a decade of astonishing productivity and inspiration. Playing with time and memory by juxtaposing works from different periods seems to me a deeply Schubertian strategy.
Lewis told Anson Yeung: “I love the vulnerability of Schubert. I love the fragility. I love the lack of resolution. In a way, it's the most real and human music. He is what he is, with all his worries, vulnerabilities, and neuroses, and that comes through in his music. The things that make human beings fragile — loss, hope, nostalgia — always come to the fore in Schubert's music. That's why I love it so much.”
Lewis has performed his sonata project to universal acclaim in major venues around the world. How wonderful that Vancouver audiences get to share his travels through some of the most exceptional piano music ever written.