There are artists who are the real deal, and who are ‘great’ for one
reason or another; there are artists who become superstars and fade,
and there are those who become legendary and remain fixed forever in
the firmament. Maria João Pires is already something of a superstar,
and while she seems to have been around forever each new release seems
to elevate her ever up that scale of greatness. As soon as you hear
the opening of the
Piano Sonata A minor D 845 you know this
is the real deal, and that something special is happening.
Pires’s opening
Moderato is measured, but things are already
occurring which make you listen to the music with new ears. There is
an intensity in the dynamics and in those repeated notes both in the
inner lines and the melody which create something fresh; which makes
one listen as if for the first time. Pires gives this movement symphonic
scale, moving with monumental stability of tempo through Schubert’s
massive and powerful statements, as well as moments of repose which
are like sleeping beasts and passages of lyrical tenderness which turn
the very furniture around us into malleable putty. Each cycle and repeat
is filled with subtle variation; the drama unraveling is pure music
which is entirely gripping and satisfying, but which seems to resist
flowery extra-musical associations. By the end of just this one movement
you wonder how Schubert is going to follow such a magnificent masterpiece,
and perhaps in this way we also understand why in some cases he never
did.
After the vast conclusion of that
Moderato there is only one
way to go, and Pires is alert to the pared-down simplicity with which
the
Andante opens. This movement is however destined to be
on as grand a scale as the first, and we are taken on a journey through
Viennese ballrooms, and then into chambers of the darkest tragedy… It’s
like the camera panning between scenes in
The Cook, The Thief, His
Wife & Her Lover, with vivid colour and contrast defining the
different spaces and their individual moods. Pires as we know is a consummate
performer of Mozart, and you can sense her feeling this music as standing
on the shoulders of this giant, but taking his technical advancement
into ever further and distant worlds. It’s no wonder audiences and players
found these kinds of works too difficult in Schubert’s lifetime. They’re
still pretty demanding even now, especially with someone like Maria
João Pires able to reveal layers of magnificence at times only hinted
at before.
Talking of new-ness, had you ever before quite realized how completely
mad the
Scherzo is in this sonata? If you love your Bruckner
you will find yourself entirely immersed and involved in this strange
and angular series of fanfares and calls and stops and outbursts. Then
at 4:21 the new central section takes us somewhere completely different,
the softness of Pires’s touch creating a genuinely magical atmosphere.
The final
Rondo is Schubert’s tease, romping us home with little
call-backs and suggested references which look both forward and backward,
so you could swear he was at times being as Caprice-ious as Paganini.
Comparing Pires with someone like
Radu
Lupu shows where the Mozart-up approach has its strengths since,
where Lupu’s playing is poetic and fiery and perhaps more overtly impressive,
his more romantic colour ultimately has a more unifying effect, and
I find I’m missing so many of the new details I’d been picking up from
Pires.
Paul
Lewis is another name to be reckoned with, and his
D 845
is breathtaking indeed. I wouldn’t want to be without his performance,
but that sense of discovery with Pires is irresistible. Lewis’s
Scherzo
for instance is a good two and half minutes shorter than Pires’s but
I find the eccentricity of Schubert more apparent with the latter. There
is room for both approaches, but Lewis’s is a lightening Tom & Jerry
escapade to Pires’s Brucknerian psychological edifice, and the relative
forward momentum of her final
Rondo wins as a result, with
Lewis’s being rather ‘more of the same’ than an entirely new and wittily
refreshing experience.
So to the Holy Grail which is the
Piano Sonata in B flat major,
D 960. If like me you have a kind of unattainable ideal of this
piece in your mind then any recording is going to find it hard if not
impossible to meet such exacting demands. What Pires has with that opening
Molto moderato is the perfect atmosphere – a fairly leisurely
pace but with lyrical shape, and a depth of detail which once again
is a newly-minted experience. She is unafraid of those repeated notes
which drive the inner workings of the music like a motor, and brings
out the stresses and dramas without excess. It is here that her quote
in the booklet is most telling, “…one can have a tendency to take hold
of the piece and interpret… Or, on the contrary, one can also not take
hold of it at all but quite simply meet it as it is.” This approach
is one which hopefully brings us closest to the composer as artist rather
than the performer, and we are gripped by Schubert as much as we are
by the clarity with which Pires communicates his musical message.
I will probably never hear my ‘perfect’
D 960, but the journey
towards finding it is made all the more pleasurable through sublime
performances such as this one. If I was coming to this piece for the
first time through this performance or introducing it to someone, then
I would be happy to take Pires’s recording as a standard bearer. Her
performance is not dissimilar in timings and quality to that of Rian
de Waal (see
review),
though she does something remarkable with the second
Andante sostenuto
movement, resisting the temptation to carry all of the notes through
with pedal in the opening bars and further on. These spread harmonic
notes are in this way given their own melodic function, and once again
a revelatory aspect of the music unfolds before our ears. Her playing
here creates exactly that kind of world-stops-turning timelessness and
sense of eternity which this listener seeks, and I treasure it warmly.
The change in character later on in this movement is also entirely in
proportion, and we are elevated onto higher planes rather than bumped
into a different gear.
One of the features I liked about Rian de Waal’s performance was the
way he managed to be inclusive of the latter movements in this sonata.
Pires doesn’t give undue weight to Schubert’s lighter moments, but similarly
imbues them with wit and expressive content. There are moments in the
Scherzo which to me feel like skating on a perfectly smooth
surface, while shapes and different lights and colours pass vividly
beneath your feet. It’s a kind of weightless dance which can be quite
vertigo inducing. The final
Allegro ma non troppo is that jaunty
journey home, but one in which the obstacles are of course the most
interesting parts. The occasional blackened and nightmarish tree looms
over our path, but Pires/Schubert keeps our spirits up and we overcome;
heroes and heroines all.
My goodness – I’m not sure if at 83:24 this isn’t the longest CD in
my collection, but there can be no complaints about the duration. As
you may have gathered, I am very enthusiastic about this recording.
Pires makes her anti-interpretation standpoint clear and manages to
create performances which are uniquely communicative and fresh, keeping
the ageing ears of this listener agape and agog from beginning to end.
Deutsche Grammophon’s piano sound is very good and the acoustic is balanced
perfectly, creating sufficient resonance without obscuring detail in
any way. If you want to enhance your life with as ‘perfect’ a Schubert
piano disc as can be recommended, then let this be your Elysian Field.
Dominy Clements
