Johann Sebastian BACH (1685-1750)
The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, BWV 870-893
Sir András Schiff (piano)
rec. live, 29 August 2018, BBC Proms concert, Royal Albert Hall, London, UK.
NTSC 16:9, PCM Stereo and DTS 5.1 (Reviewed in surround). Video director, Helen Scott.
NAXOS 2.110654 DVD [142 mins]
In András Schiff’s new book (“Music Comes out of Silence”, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2020) the pianist has a lot to say about Bach, including the Forty-eight Preludes and Fugues or Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC). He defends the use of the piano, which hardly seems necessary any longer, especially when the stylistic manner is so persuasive, and the sustaining pedal hardly used, as in this performance. “The clarity of the counterpoint and voice-leading must be self-evident - a discreet use of the pedal can be tolerated as long as the player respects these rules”.
Of course Schiff has been performing and thinking about this music throughout his long career, and this is his third recording of the WTC, after the CD sets for Decca in the 1980’s and for ECM in 2012. That second version he saw as superseding his first one, and this live interpretation is fairly close to that on the ECM discs, with the extra immediacy and sense of spontaneity that come from a live performance. As he says in his new book “ I’ve always felt Bach as liberating, because he prescribes so little – hardly any tempi, no dynamic markings, no phrasing, no articulation. It allows you to express yourself through him”. Small wonder Schiff still starts every day with an hour of Bach which provides him he says with “refreshment for body soul and spirit”.
He writes – and this is the key to the success of these performances – that it is important to bear the dance elements in mind. “Detached, unphrased notes should be held a little longer than their notated value, that produces the music’s breathing and pulsation which are so important.” Not that he needs a score to check notated values, as the entire recital is given from memory, and without an interval. (Angela Hewitt played both books across two evenings in Edinburgh last year - the last time I heard live keyboard Bach close to this calibre – but sensibly began at 7.30, had the score on her tablet, and gave us all an interval.)
Thus this DVD is as close to being there as it gets. No extras, just a man in his 60’s who walks onto the Albert Hall platform, acknowledges the welcome from several thousand lovers of Bach and Schiff’s playing of it. He takes his seat at the keyboard, plays superbly for two hours and twenty minutes continuously. “Refreshment for body soul and spirit” indeed. There is nothing of showing off in any of this, though it seems to us like an epic feat. “It is not especially difficult for me to play Bach from memory” he says “I’m lucky enough to have a good memory which works ideally for Bach.”
He claims he sees the twenty-four keys as different colours (his book provides a list), and there is certainly much variety of colour in his playing. This is helped by selecting a powerful Steinway rather than his usual Bösendorfer, presumably as better suited to reaching the many very distant seats of the Albert Hall. He responds to each piece according to its character, not with some all-purpose approach, so neither the reverential sempre legato or the relentless sewing machine rhythms one sometimes hears, are on display. Instead the rhythms are buoyantly dancing, and the lyrical moments gracious but flowing, as in the aria-like Prelude of the C sharp minor work. As piece follows piece, the sense grows that we are following a single work with a connected but varied narrative, as much as twenty-four independent works, a sense helped on the night perhaps by having no interval. He used the pedal, as we expect, very sparingly – to briefly swell the majestic sonority of the E major Fugue, and for the very last chord of the evening. Schiff’s Bach is free from any hint of rhetoric applied to the music from without, but there is a kind of cumulative rhetorical power in advancing through the keys over such a long span of time.
There is no competition for this I think – there used to be a DVD filmed in various locations, and with the playing (and talking) shared between Hewitt, MacGregor, Demidenko, and Gavrilow, some of which I saw on television, but that is a quite different approach to this highly recommendable film of a single, live performance from one pianist. In fact we now have the whole WTC live from Schiff, as the previous year’s Prom occasion devoted to Book One is also available on a Naxos DVD, and both can be obtained in the blu-ray format for those wanting the higher resolution option.)
DVD surround sound here though is very good, and the video direction of Helen Scott is near ideal, with a small range of camera angles used sensitively. There are occasional long shots reminding us that there is a shadowy audience present, listening in rapt silence. There is a good booklet note on the music by Keith Anderson, and a track listing – each pairing of Prelude and Fugue shares one track, and the film has a brief subtitle at the start of each new pair. (Schiff’s ECM CD issue has separate tracks for Prelude and Fugue, but that could be intrusive over a film.) After the great cycle closes with the last notes of the B minor Fugue, Schiff gets up and acknowledges the applause with a modest demeanour, short bows, a hint of a smile, hands at one point clasped together before his breast, like a priest offering a benediction. Which in a way that is what he had just done.
Roy Westbrook
