Schiff’s Schubert at the Wigmore

For tragic albeit fortuitous reasons I find myself in London teaching a Beatle class, put up and well-paid only homesick for my family beyond words. For solace I seek out culture, and last week I caught Andras Schiff playing Schubert at the Wigmore Hall. (The link goes to the Guardian excellent podcast series on Schiff’s Beethoven sonatas.) The hall is warm and cozy, the pianist among my favorites, and the repertoire was Impromptus, Moments Musiceaux and a few short pieces. And much to my surprise, especially given the thriving state of culture over here, there was no review, at least that I could find the day after or since. So here goes. (Much later, I found one here.)

Schiff had an uneven night. He was playing a Bosendorfer, which sounded lovely, but there were voicing problems throughout. When things went well, he had a silky singing line atop feather bedding — he has one of the most breathtaking pianissimos known to mortals. But there were some tricky passages which the lines didn’t get handed off between hands very well, or when inner voices, carved to perfection, suddenly stepped on the upper lines; it was subtle enough to be entirely forgiveable but noticeable enough to ears like mine that the evening was smudged. I’ve heard him play much better. And in the E-flat impromptu, he had a couple bars that simply got away from him. It made me wonder whether he was confronting an unfamiliar piano, or whether some voicing work had been done on the hammers since he played it last. The program was also too long by about twenty minutes, and Schiff tends to spoon out just a tad more than his audience can readily take in. He’s clearly a long-distance runner, but this taxes the ear when it comes to so many miniatures all done in a row. In Boston a few years back, he lost most of us on a varied program by playing about forty minutes of Scarlatti at the start — it was like starting a meal with too many bon-bons.
I just hope that the early slips and the unwieldy keys didn’t give him too much bother… when I opened my eyes to watch him, it seemed as if he was using way too much arm control and not nearly enough body weight. They say the pianissimo is all in the flesh around the finger bones — but it has to exist within larger contrasts, right? The crowd was enthusiastic, but not leaping to their feet the way some UK audiences are prone to do. This reserved British character gives way when they really love a performer and standing ovations are far more typical over here than in the states, ironically.