An extraordinary evening with the greatest pianist of his era
András Schiff/ Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Royal Festival Hall
Sir András Schiff is a man of high principles in every sphere of life. He refuses to play in his native Hungary while Right-wing extremist Viktor Orbán is prime minister, and has suffered for his outspokenness. One angry nationalist threatened to cut off his hands. He plays only the loftiest masterpieces – Bach fugues, Beethoven sonatas, Brahms concertos. He’s always exquisitely turned out, wears a fob watch, and speaks with a slow precision flavoured with a fruity Hungarian accent, an enticing mingling of sensuousness with intelligence.
But it’s more than just show. Through stealth, the 65-year-old Schiff has emerged as the greatest pianist of his generation and proved this on Monday night with an astonishing feat of all-round musicality in the first of two concerts with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in which the centrepieces are the two immense piano concertos of Johannes Brahms.
What makes Schiff special is that deep immersion in the classical canon that has been ripening in him for half a century, combined with a pianism which has the arc of the phrase and the whole form in view, and doesn’t fuss too much over each tiny nuance.
The lordly quality in his playing would suggest an impregnable ego but Schiff has always nurtured younger players (for whom he is an inspiration), teaching at the Barenboim-said Academy and curating a concert series showcasing younger talent. Recently he’s taken up conducting and, like his peer Daniel Barenboim, takes on both roles in one concert – with everything performed from memory (previously shown to impressive if austere effect in his recitals of Bach such as The Well-tempered Clavier at the Proms).
The first thing that struck me was the almost demonic energy lurking inside this dapper little man. But it’s not the energy of speed or hurry. The tempos in this concert were nearly always on the grand side.
The concert began with a terrific performance of Schumann’s Konzertstücke (Concert Pieces), rarely heard as it requires four horn players of dizzying virtuosity. That might be a problem for some orchestras, but not the OAE. Watching Roger Montgomery, Martin Lawrence, Gavin Edwards and David Bentley execute their vertiginous leaps was the musical equivalent of pole-vaulting. In the slow movement, Schiff ’s unusually slow tempo made the music’s glowing romanticism shine out.
Then came Schumann’s Fourth Symphony. The transition from the sombre slow introduction to the main fast movement was like the sun breaking out, but Schiff didn’t drive the music hard to a breakneck fast tempo. This is a natural tendency with period instrument orchestras, as their more transparent, leaner sound favours faster speeds, but Schiff refused to give way. The tempo here was gracefully spacious, which allowed Schiff to engineer a very slow acceleration to a really thrilling finish.
As for Brahms’s Piano Concerto No 1, it felt almost threateningly huge. Schiff played on a 1860 Bluthner piano and made full use of its seductively wide palette. But where a younger pianist might have fetishised that, bringing it out at every moment, Schiff just took it as read, as if his mind was on bigger things. He doesn’t deal in ingratiating softness, and here played with an almost careless grandeur, utterly unsentimental, with a tone that was huge but never hard.
The evening’s most telling moment came at the end, in Brahms’s late Intermezzo in A major. Some players bend over the keyboard, teasing out every ounce of nostalgia, but Schiff made the music seem almost breezy and relaxed in its tenderness.
Like Barenboim, Schiff has an ease that makes him seem like the living embodiment of a culture, rather than just a fine pianist, but he does it – dare I say – with more finesse, and certainly more right notes.
Bravo to the OAE, for giving us the chance to witness something so extraordinary.