SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Schumann: András Schiff (piano), Laeiszhalle Hamburg, 20.1.2009 (TKT)

Klavierstücke op. 82 (Forest Scenes)
Sonata in f sharp minor op. 11
Fantasia in C major op. 17
Variations on a Theme in E flat major (Ghost Variations, work without opus number)

In 1848 Europe was shaken up by revolutions. Germany’s middle class fought for democratic rights and hoped for a unification of the country which Napoleon’s war machine had split into countless states and dukedoms. By March 1849 the armies had prevailed and the revolutions failed. In Germany, the end of the uprisings spelled the dissolution of the first democratic parliament and a terrifying number of court-martials and mass executions.

During this period Robert Schumann went – not out into the streets but into his study and back to the piano, which he had begun to neglect as a composer some eight years before. He entered the romantic forest of his mind and composed idyllic little pieces, such as “Lonely Flowers” and “Bird as Prophet,” the perhaps most enchanting of the Forest Scenes.

It was one of the three compositions that replaced works that had been advertised. Instead of the promised evening of Schumann and Beethoven, were given an all-Schumann program instead (except for the encore, for which Schiff made the remarkable choice of Beethoven’s entire opus 109 sonata). How appropriate that first piece was! As world history was being made outside the concert hall – we all missed Barack Obama’s inauguration speech – András Schiff, who recently completed his landmark live recordings of Beethoven’s 32 sonatas, played the rather inconsequential Forest Scenes with a poetry that made us wonder why we ever thought them insignificant. World history did not matter during the almost two and a half hours of the concert. Schumann/Schiff put a Romantic spell on us.

The music became considerably more dramatic with the five-movement f sharp minor sonata, Schumann’s successful attempt to express something original in that form after Beethoven. Written during the time of his courtship for Clara Wieck before harsh reality set in in the form of marriage, it is full of longing, pain, and desire. Schiff’s play was of such emotional maturity that it conveyed the full intensity of emotions without us ever getting lost in them. He made the music sweep the listeners up, but never in order to exhibit his virtuosity. Ever true to letter and spirit of a composition, Schiff never acts the star but always plays in the service of the music. World-class musicianship cannot be more modest.

Schumann arguably wrote no other piece of piano music with as broad a range as his Fantasia in C major, the only work that had originally been announced. It is dark and poetic, full of sorrow and yearning, brilliant, extraverted and delicate, impetuous and quiet – and Schiff was noticeably annoyed when a few smart alecks started clapping early, disrupting the silence that concludes the Fantasia.

When Schumann was already in the asylum to which he had retreated, he was “dictated” a melody by “angels” about which he later wrote five variations (as did his friend Brahms later on as well). It is music that is so utterly simple, so infinitely sad and yet ineffably beautiful, you want to cry while at the same time wondering whether anything will ever make you really despair again in a world where such beauty exists. And yet, just ten days after he recorded this melody, Schumann tried to drown himself in the Rhine. Reality, it turns out, cannot really be discontinued – but such is the wonderful illusion music can create when we are in the hands of a master.

Thomas K Thornton

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