According to Schubert's friend Albert Stadler, the composer had "A
beautiful touch, a steady hand, clear and clean playing full of spirit
and feeling. He still belonged to the old school of good pianists, in
which the fingers didn't attack the poor keys aggressively." Those
remarks might equally well be applied to the young British pianist Paul
Lewis, who embarked upon his Schubert Sonata series with this superb
recital, heard with rapt attention by a packed house.
These sonatas, with their poetic language and melodic structure, are
closely related to Schubert's songs, and it was one of the many
strengths of this performance that Lewis brought out this relationship,
with his cantabile style of playing and his lovely, unforced phrasing.
He conveyed that characteristic Schubertian sense of introspection
whilst also relishing the more extrovert passages such as those inspired
by Laendler and other dances.
In a memorable essay about Fischer-Dieskau, Gerald Moore once wrote that
what set the baritone apart from every other singer was Rhythm - "This
is the life-blood of music and he is the master of it." We come back to
that song connection again, since one of the great skills of this
younger master is the way in which he recognises the inherent rhythmic
coherence of each piece; one is never dismayed by the "heavenly length"
of performances in which the pianist has so clearly mapped out for us
the rhythmic pattern upon which each movement is based. This was
especially true of the E flat major D568, with its song-like Andante and
lilting minuet.
The D major sonata, D850, is perhaps the most misunderstood of
Schubert's piano works, in the sense that it is frequently played as an
extrovert tour de force, and the relationship with both "Die Schoene
Muellerin" and "Winterreise" is forgotten. Lewis understood perfectly
that this wonderful sonata is built upon Schubert's experience of the
natural world, just as strongly as are those great cycles (it was
written at Bad Gastein in 1825, surrounded by a romantic countryside of
mountains and rushing brooks) and he brought out superbly those
important contrasts between the birdsong-like variations of the second
movement and the more brooding, bleak elements of the first. The most
remarkable feature of the Laendler - based Scherzo and the delicate,
sighing Rondo was the use Lewis made of Schubert's silences; those
crucial rests are so frequently fluffed in performance, either by the
pianist's reluctance to give them their full weight or by one stray
cougher who seizes upon them as the ideal moment to make his presence
felt, but here they were an integral, and most moving, part of the
whole.
Wilhelm Kempff was sometimes criticised for emphasising the poetry of
these sonatas at the expense of their drama; this is not a criticism
which could ever be directed at Paul Lewis, yet Lewis is still very much
a pianist in Kempff's mould, and there could hardly be any higher
praise; the other recitals in the series, on December 2nd, March 7th and
May 5th, are most warmly recommended.
Melanie Eskenazi
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