András Schiff - Wigmore Hall, 9 September 2008
There's always one, isn't there?
This time, it was the total t1t who, like the rest of the audience, sat silent throughout the hundred non-stop spellbinding minutes of András Schiff's Goldberg Variations. Then erupted with an almighty cough about 2 milliseconds after Schiff had struck his last note. Before his fingers had even left the keyboard!
Was it a set-up? Who knows (- Schiff is notoriously touchy about interruptions - and why shouldn't he be?)
Score-free and pedal-less, the performance had all the Schiff trademarks of intelligence and clarity. He made his points strongly and unequivocally, sometimes controversially. His tuneseeking tendency to cleave to a line could destabilise and unbalance. And though the strange dissonances of variation 25 were quite properly emphasised before resolution, I'm not sure they needed quite the bold caps double underlining they received. But he didn't, as some before him have done, chicken out when it came to the rapidfire super-virtuoso sections, appreciating the need for balance in tempos as in every other aspect of the work. It was a performance that reached the intellect more than the heart perhaps, but still a stunning achievement.
Afterwards, he seemed genuinely touched to receive the Wigmore Medal for his contribution (over 30 years!) to the musical life of Wigmore Hall. And despite his pianothon, he even managed a coherent and graceful speech of thanks, the coughing interloper apparently forgotten.
Recent Comments