Presentazione Programma

(recensione da) INTERNATIONAL RECORD REVIEW, December 2008

Beethoven Volume 7: Piano Sonatas - No. 27 in E minor, Op. 90; No. 28 in A, Op. 101; No. 29 in B flat, Op. 106, 'Hammerklavier'.
Andras Schiff (piano).
ECM New Series 476 6189 (full price, 1 hour 17 minutes). Date Live performances in the Tonhalle, Zurich on May 21st, 2006.

Beethoven Volume 8: Piano Sonatas - No. 30 in E, Op. 109; No. 31 in A flat, Op. 110; No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111.
Andras Schiff (piano).
ECM New Series 476 6192 (full price, 1 hour 5 minutes). Date September 23rd, 2007.

Although Andras Schiff's chronological survey of Beethoven's sonatas has been a while in the making, these last two volumes have arrived in quick succession. Schiff is nothing if not a thoughtful pianist. These are again deeply considered performances, with an impeccable control of chordal balance and articulation. His range of colour is extraordinarily wide. Sometimes Schiff seems to have achieved Debussy's ideal of an instrument without hammers; sometimes the attack is so sharp it sounds as though the strings are being plucked.
His interpretative approach is again spelled out in detail in the accompanying booklets. In the eighth volume, Schiff adds an essay of his own to the interviews with Martin Meyer which have become a feature of the series. Volume 7, like its predecessors, was recorded in concert in Zurich and Schiff describes the audience as 'not only well-informed, but also extremely disciplined'. So it would seem - barely a rustle is to be heard from them in even the closest headphone listening and there is no applause on these discs.
Despite the concert environment this is unusually intimate Beethoven, reminding us sometimes of the Schubert recordings which are among Schiff's finest achievements. These performances do not give up their secrets all at once but reward careful, repeated listening. Those seeking virtuoso histrionics should look elsewhere: Schiff allows Beethoven's music to take him to the limits of his (quite extraordinary) control but never beyond. This is certainly not the only way to do it (and I would hate to do without the traditional approach), but the results are never less than beautiful and sometimes uniquely effective. (I must correct an egregious error of my own. When reviewing Volume 2 1 initially took Schiff's instrument to be a Bdsendorfer. I then read the credit in the booklet: 'Instruments: Angelo Fabbrini, Pescara', but I should have trusted my ears. Fabbrini does not in fact make the instruments; his workshop voices and tunes the Bosendorfers and Steinways which Schiff has used throughout the cycle.)
Beethoven's lyrical side has the ascendancy for much of Volume 7. The Op. 90 Sonata is not one of Beethoven's most extroverted, especially as presented here - although Schiff's chordal attacks are as crisp as ever, it is the cantabile material that remains longer in the memory, partly because of the subtle variation of tempo and nuance Schiff brings to every turn. Op. 101 continues in similar vein:
although Schiff (like Beethoven!) brings plent of contrast, it is the sonata's lyrical side which registers most strongly.
Inevitably Op. 106 dominates the disc, as it would any selection. The Hammerklavier is performed with just as much assurance as are its less daunting counterparts. Schiff insis on the observance of the first movement's metronome marking and of taking both the first bass note and following chord in the lef hand: `Anything' that makes this beginning technically easier will fail to do justice to its overwhelming expressive strength.' His technical armoury is more than adequate for the exacting task he sets himself in the outer movements and there is thus never any danger of him reducing the work to a virtuoso exhibition: if anything, the core of his performance is the Adagio. The tempo is perfectly judged. Schiff again insists on Beethoven's metronome marking (quaver=92 allowing the movement to flow through its various episodes and side-slip modulations - the impassioned be] canto moments late in th movement are particularly effective.
The final three sonatas were recorded in 0 studio - in fact in a concert-hall (the Reitstad in Neumarkt), but without an audience presen The playing is still astonishing, the insights profound, and the music itself is, of course, some of the finest there is. Still, Schiff has a point when he writes in his own booklet tea '[Beethoven's] music needs great moments and spontaneous instants that only happen "live" - if we're lucky ... and what happen: if the concert doesn't work? Then you don' have to issue the results.' Indeed not, but t (strictly speaking inaudible) complicity of at attentive audience has somehow managed tc come across in the previous releases and it' hard to avoid missing it here.
There are some details of Schiff's interpretation in the Op. 109 Sonata whicf need some getting used to. In the Andante cantabile, for instance, he clips the first bet of the second bar, which is fine in itself but seems at odds with the generally very sustained approach to the theme. (He doe do it for the return of the theme at the e He has a bet each way with the theme's I cluster of grace notes, playing them on if beat the first time, before the beat on th( repeat. The movement takes a while to establish a sense of momentum - perhaps here more than anywhere one misses the concert environment. Op. 110 is more successful: the Adagio ma non troppo is exactly that and the various moods of the closing fugue are beautifully captured. In the final sonata I did for once wish for a little m extroversion in the opening movement to balance the predominant calm of the second but that is hardly Schiff's way of doing
In any case, these are two fine releases worthy of joining their predecessors in what for me is one of the most reward Beethoven sonata cycles in recent years

Carl Rosman

(recensione da) GRAMOPHONE, December 2008

Beethoven: `The Piano Sonatas, Vol 7'. Piano Sonatas - No 27, Op 90; No 28, Op 101; No 29, `Hammerklavier', Op 106
Andras Schiff
ECM New Series 476 6189 (77' • DDD) Recorded live at the Tonhalle, Zurich

Beethoven: `The Piano Sonatas, Vol 8'. Piano Sonatas-No 30, Op 109; No 31, Op 110; No 32, Op 11 I
Andras Schiff
ECM New Series OO 476 6192 (65' • DDD)

Schiff completes his cycle with playing as provocative and imaginative as ever
Imagine a fortepiano's clipped, biting quality of note attacks, acute timbral distinctions between registers and widely varying resonances available from the sustain pedal. Fortify these attributes with the modem concert grand's lung-power and potential for large-scale projection, and you've got the essence of Andras Schiff s Beethoven cycle, which remains as provocative as ever throughout its final two instalments.
If you've followed the cycle to date, you'll notice that Schiff's fondness for breaking of hands is more pronounced this time around. Sometimes the effect magnifies felicities of voice-leading or expression; other times it comes off as arch and mannered. In Op 90 the pianist brings out the first movement's underlying disquiet through sharply defined dynamic contrasts, hyper-articulated distinctions between legato and detached phrasing, and daringly blurred pedallings (the taxing left-hand rotary patterns). The left hand's often smoothed-out melodic interest emerges centre-stage as a foil to the slightly overphrased right-hand material in the finale.
Schiffs variegated touch and tonal control impress in Op 101's first movement, yet he sidesteps the second-movement march's obsessive ferocity. He is fastidious in the fugal finale at the expense of forward momentum. This comment also applies to the Hammerklavier's challenging outer movements, although Schiff's detailed inflections leave none of the oddball gestures of the little Scherzo unscrutinised. The easy ebb and flow of his intimately scaled Adagio sostenuto belies its relatively short playing-time.
Schiff's strengths and quirks make their marks throughout the last three sonatas. He plays Op 109 directly and simply, absorbing finely tuned details of balance, voicing and articulation within a big picture (such as the Scherzo's rarely observed non-legato phrasings). The long cantabiles of Op 110's Adagio ma non troppo lend themselves better to Schiffs hand-breaking than the first movement's gentle, rapid figurations. However, the pianist assiduously navigates the fugue's tricky tempo relationships.
Schiff begins Op 111's Maestoso promisingly (note the impeccably gauged trills, for example), only to tread gingerly in a rather four-square, underprojected Allegro con brio. Only a few fussy distensions break Schiffs long-lined focus and concentration in the expansively conceived Arietta, where the long chains of trills fill the room at even their softest point. ECM's sound remains remarkably consistent and lifelike between the two different venues from which these recordings stem.

Jed Distler

(recensione da) FANFARE, January-February 2009

These two volumes bring to a close András Schiff’s cycle of Beethoven’s piano sonatas recorded live at various venues, on different instruments, and presented in chronological order of composition rather than in numerical order or by date of publication. The project was launched in 2005, and it has been my privilege to review the entire set, except for Volume 6, released in May 2008, but thus far not sent to me or, to my knowledge, to any other Fanfare contributor for review. So, for starters, let’s recap:

Overall, Schiff has been variable, turning in some of his best performances in the lesser-known sonatas than in the big named works in which he has occasionally sounded a bit too cautious. One of his main strengths has been in bringing out Beethoven’s quirky humor. As we move into the later sonatas presented on these two final volumes, however, quirkiness abounds, but it tends not to be of the humorous variety. Rather, it lies in the eccentricities of Beethoven’s notation and the strangeness, if not otherworldly visions of his music.
The huge and bold conception that is the “Hammerklavier” Sonata is, as I have argued elsewhere, not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. For all of its audacity and unprecedented dimensions, it is the logical endgame to the gambit begun in the “Waldstein” and “Appassionata” Sonatas. It is the last three sonatas that represent embarkation aboard a ship sailing into uncharted waters. So how does Schiff handle this sea change in Beethoven’s journey that occurred between 1818, when the “Hammerklavier” was completed, and two years later, in 1820, when the ink had dried on the E-Major Sonata No. 30? His “Hammerklavier” is fleet and crisp, lighter in weight than we are accustomed to hearing, but perfectly styled to underscore my point above that the work is the apotheosis of all that came before it rather than the setting sail for distant shores. Schiff’s reading is also strongly architectural in that it reveals the structural underpinnings of the work, a completely valid and satisfying alternative to that, say, of Schnabel, who was more responsive to Beethoven’s fantasy on a moment-by-moment basis. If Schnabel was a bit more inclined to pause along the way to appreciate the Parthenon’s decorative friezes, Schiff envisions the edifice in more purely Classical terms of angle and proportion. He is not as apt to be distracted by the ornamental. The cumulative effect—and it must be emphasized that it is cumulative—is a very powerful and communicative performance. I’d rate Schiff’s “Hammerklavier” at or very near the top of his cycle, and one of the more persuasive to come along in awhile.
Switching to the second of the two discs, one senses immediately that Schiff gets it. It takes him no time at all to acquire his sea legs. This is a different ocean, but one that Schiff seems completely comfortable swimming in. My yardstick for measuring performances of the late sonatas is, as always, the last movement of the No. 30 in E-Major, for which Beethoven provided alternate expression directions in German and Italian that, while not conflicting, don’t mean exactly the same things. Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung translates as “Songful, with the most intimate feeling,” whereas Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo translates as “At a moderately slow tempo, singing, and expressive.” The question appertains to the molto. Did Beethoven mean andante molto, which would qualify the tempo, or did he mean molto cantabile, which would qualify the character? Then, too, the German direction is all about character, but says nothing of tempo. Schiff opts for the molto qualifying the character rather than the tempo, which he takes at a not overly drawn-out true andante. But his espressivo is indeed molto, floating on gossamer wings to a blessed place of forgiveness and benediction. This final disc in Schiff’s Beethoven cycle is the best of all. Never have I heard the Bach roots of the fugue in the A♭-Major Sonata exposed with such clarity.
The discs, which I received in prerelease format, include fascinating essays by Schiff on Beethoven’s late sonatas and various performing practices that have grown up around them.
For me, this is a desert island CD (a silly concept, unless you have solar cell rechargeable batteries to spin your discs). If you’ve been collecting the entire cycle, these last two entries need no special pleading; but even if you haven’t, Schiff’s “Hammerklavier” and last three sonatas come with a most urgent buy recommendation.

Jerry Dubins