Schubert:
Philharmonia
Orchestra / Andras Schiff (conductor,
piano), St. David’s Hall, Cardiff,
31.03.07 (GPu)
Symphony No.2 in B flat major, D 125
Four Impromptus, D 899
Symphony No.5 in B flat major, D 485
Schubert’s youthful symphonies are
still rather underestimated. The young
Schubert has too often been seen as
some kind of intuitive natural genius
warbling his woodnotes wild. In fact
the best of these symphonies are
complex and subtle pieces, both richly
embedded in Viennese tradition and
formally inventive, works of some
emotional complexity. Anybody not
already convinced of their merits
would surely have been persuaded of
their error if they had attended this
Cardiff
concert in Andras Schiff’s Schubert
series with the Philharmonia.
The Second Symphony was written
between December 1814 and March 1815.
The seventeen year old Schubert
produced a work which, while there are
clear allusions to Mozart (including
the G minor symphony) and, especially,
to Beethoven (his Second Symphony and
the Prometheus overture), isn’t
merely derivative. Brahms admired this
second symphony and in a performance
such as this it wasn’t hard to hear
why that should have been the case. In
the first movement’s slow
introduction, Schiff blended the
strings and woodwinds of the
Philharmonia in quite beautiful
fashion; the transition to the
drivingly rhythmic writing which
characterises the movement was
articulated to perfection. The
compulsive rhythmic intensity of much
of the first movement had a tensile
energy in which any lightness of
spirit was shot through with a certain
edginess. Moments of relaxation amidst
the insistent forward momentum spoke
of that conflict which is evident even
in the music of the youthful Schubert,
that simultaneous apprehension of, on
the one hand, the timeless and, on the
other, life’s brevity. The string
quartet opening of the andante second
movement was a thing of remarkable
beauty and the chamber-music clarity
of this opening was sustained
throughout the succeeding five
variations. Here (and elsewhere) the
precision of ensemble and the clarity
of sound were outstanding. The
aggressive rhythms of the third
movement, full of off-beat accents,
were only temporarily held at bay by
the quieter central section, and the
dominant tone was one of frustration,
even anger – but all held within a
structure of neo-classical elegance.
The closing presto conveyed more a
sense of pursuit than of contentment,
the young Schubert perhaps sounding
most Beethovenian here. Such
concluding triumph as there was, was
not remotely complacent; there were no
illusions that closure or stability
might be easily won or result from
mere adherence to formal rules.
Schiff’s reading of this symphony was
as good as any I have ever heard. It
was conducted with a well-judged sense
of appropriate scale; without any kind
of inflation or excessive rhetoric the
Beethovenian model was implicitly
acknowledged and the work’s
considerable emotional complexity was
given full expression. A work
sometimes thought of merely in terms
of youthful blithe spirits was
revealed as having other things to
offer above and around such
superficial innocence.
The Fifth Symphony belongs to 1816.
Scored for strings, plus one flute and
pairs of oboes, bassoons and horns, it
is a work perhaps rather simpler in
its emotional language than its
predecessor. It is a work which seems
consciously to avoid the large gesture
– the dynamic level is on the low side
throughout and in the absence of
percussion or trumpets there are no
loud affirmations or objections; the
whole air is relaxed and genial and
the rhythms are largely without the
almost obsessive insistence which
characterises parts of the Second
Symphony. This performance brought out
well the sheer good humour of the
opening and communicated an
unexaggerated joy in its lilting
rhythms. The andante was taken rather
slowly, but the lines were well
sustained and we were extended a
persuasive invitation to follow at
leisure Schubert’s harmonic and
melodic elaboration of his material,
to enjoy this lovely demonstration of
what, for all the sophistication of
the method, feels like “grace in all
simplicity”. This really was the music
of utter contentment, but the
contentment of a highly sophisticated
mind, not of a mere innocent. I did
wonder whether the third movement
minuet might not have been taken just
a little quicker, might not have been
imbued with a slightly greater degree
of rhythmic drive; but any minor
reservations disappeared with a
splendidly vivacious account of the
closing presto, beautifully clear in
structure, subtle in its handling of
shifts in dynamic and tempo, a
Schubertian updating of Haydn quite
masterly in its serious playfulness.
Between the two symphonies the
hard-working Schiff gave a compelling
performance of one of the two sets of
Schubert’s Impromptus, later works
written in the penultimate year of the
composer’s life. Schiff brings a sense
of graceful politeness to all that he
does, though without the slightest
hint of the superficiality that such a
description might be taken to imply.
Schiff made an excellent recording of
these pieces in 1998 and here on stage
in
Cardiff
his identity with the music was so
absolute that it was almost as if one
was indeed listening to a master
musician improvising at the keyboard.
His control of the complex
architecture of the first of this set
of four impromptus was seemingly
effortless and natural, his playing
having an unforced power and
remarkable clarity of delineation. The
triplet figurations were played with
unflamboyant panache and the whole was
imbued with a great sense of unforced
drama. The eighth-notes of the second
piece had a winning grace, but the
darker passages at its heart and the
rapid coda held grace and power in
rich complementarity. A high spot was
the limpid beauty of Schiff’s
performance of the third impromptu,
the melodic lines beautifully shaped,
the control of tone and dynamics
absolute but unpedantic, the whole a
minor masterpiece of serene,
contemplative music making. In the
last of the set Schiff displayed once
more that heightened awareness of both
detail and larger design, of fidelity
and passion, that characterised his
work throughout this very fine
concert.
Writing in his ABC of Reading
in 1951, Ezra Pound observed that
“Music rots when it gets too far
from the dance”. At the hands – and
baton – of Andras Schiff, the music
of Schubert is never in danger of
forgetting its roots in the dance
(and the song), without ever being
limited by such an awareness. In the
rhythmic alertness of his playing
and conducting, in his ability to
take even the youthful Schubert with
entire seriousness, but without misplaced
gravity, Schiff presided over a very
fine ‘Schubertiade’.
Glyn
Pursglove
