SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Schubert's last three piano sonatas:  Craig Sheppard (piano) Meany Hall, Seattle, 5.5.2010 (BJ)

 

A dream program: the C-minor, A-major, and B-flat-major sonatas are, all three, among Schubert’s most magical masterpieces, and played together they make at least as effective a grouping as the corresponding Beethoven triptych. Craig Sheppard is professor of piano at the University of Washington, where Meany Hall is situated, and where he presents some stimulating and ingenious programs: next November sees the inception of a five-concert cycle titled “Mostly Brahms,” which will place that composer’s complete solo piano works alongside music from other pens.

 

The Philadelphia-born pianist has kept his technique in excellent shape, while doing his fair share of exploration around relatively little-known areas in (and outside) the repertoire. In recent years Schubert’s sonatas have emerged from the almost total neglect they suffered until Schnabel brought them before the public, and so, happily, they no longer count as little-known. But this was the first time I have heard the last three performed on one program, and it was a highly rewarding experience.

 

Sheppard commands fine taste an impressive range of expression. In his playing on this occasion what I enjoyed most consistently was his rhythm, which was propulsive and flexible without ever becoming mannered. The minuet and scherzo movements were, in consequence, particularly delightful. There were also many passages, especially in the outer movements of the A-minor sonata, where the pianist fashioned some wonderful contrasts of tone among the various layers of the texture.

 

It is often difficult for a critic to distinguish those characteristics in a piano performance that are determined by the pianist from those that stem from the piano. I am not an expert on this topic, but I suspect that the piano Sheppard was playing has not been altogether well maintained and regulated, with the result that there is a certain unevenness of touch from one note to the next. I cannot be sure whether a rather excessive emphasis on the upper registers in proportion to the bass should be laid to Sheppard’s charge or to that of the instrument. What I am sure about is that, whatever its cause, the relative lightness of the bass led to my only major disappointment in the course of the evening. This came at the restatement of the main theme in the slow movement of the A-major sonata, where Schubert asks for a pianissimo and changes the first bass note from F-sharp to E-natural, while keeping the barcarolle-like tune at its original pitch. The effect is to shift the music from a mournful F-sharp minor to a heart-easing if sadly temporary A major. We ought to have the sense that we have been transported on the instant to a different world, but on this occasion the relative weakness of that bass E robbed the change of its enchantment.

 

In order to fit the three works into a recital of reasonable length, Sheppard omitted the first-movement exposition repeats. It was an understandable decision, and not especially damaging in the first two of the sonatas. In the B-flat work, however, the effect of cutting the repeat results in the omission of the extraordinary first-time bars, which are shocking in their histrionic departure from the general tenor of serenity that has governed the music up to that point. It was precisely because of the passage’s seemingly anomalous oddity that Alfred Brendel, for one, judged that it was indeed better left out, and so, like Sheppard, he did not observe the repeat. I should have thought, however, that Schubert might be trusted to know what he wanted his sonata to sound like. In my judgement the excision has the effect of making the beginning of the development section sound curiously ineffective, because we have not heard the stunning departure from which it constitutes a return. And meanwhile, having not heard it, we will not have been sitting on tenterhooks wondering whether the violence might be waiting in the wings to pounce on us again at any moment.

 

Those reservations aside, it was an evening of thoughtful, thought-provoking, and often deeply satisfying music-making. I had a great time.

 

Bernard Jacobson