Ensemble

Contrasting Emotional Worlds

MIKE WHEELER notes the distinction of Paul Lewis as a Schubert interpreter at the 2024 Buxton Festival

 

2023's Buxton Festival saw Paul Lewis giving the first two in a sequence of four recitals covering all of Schubert's mature piano sonatas. This year he returned to complete the survey, demonstrating once again his distinction as a Schubert interpreter - St John's Church, Buxton, UK, 5 July 2024.

He launched the first of the two recitals with the Sonata in A minor, D 537. The first movement set off with determination, its jolting rhythmic character firmly etched, with nagging accents disrupting the more lyrical music. The uncertain pause before the coda was a striking moment. The second movement begins with one of Schubert's characteristically amiable jog-trot themes, which he re-used in the finale of the Sonata in A, D 959. Lewis characterised the shifts of tone with his usual astuteness, from the moments when Schubert slips away to somewhere less public, to the more apprehensive second episode, and the determined pacing underlying the theme as it finally comes to rest. The last of the three movements opens with the effect of a bold statement questioned, before the main impetus kicks in. Lewis maintained the dichotomy right through to the movement's blunt sign-off.

Paul Lewis Schubert Series III advertised in the 2024 Buxton Festival brochure
Paul Lewis Schubert Series III advertised in the 2024 Buxton Festival brochure

Another taut rhythmic figure sets the Sonata in B, D 575, in motion. Lewis kept Schubert's textures lucid, and the ambiguity of passages that are not as laid-back as they seem was nicely touched in. Following a tension-filled break, his account of the second movement illuminated Schubert's ability to straddle two contrasting emotional worlds simultaneously - here, the ruminative and the strenuous, and lyrical theme against restless accompaniment. More moments of elusive tonality characterise the waltz-like third movement, with Lewis giving the poignant silences full weight. In his hands, the bouncy, springy fourth movement was engaging, with nerves of steel underneath. The moment when the music threatens to break up, then strides out again in a new key, was a major turning-point.

The quiet opening to the Sonata in G, D 894, was confiding, Lewis drawing listeners in as we set out on the journey - from plaintive to strenuous, to amiability again, to the vehement and stern, with Schubert obsessing over the main rhythmic figure. The second movement was aptly tentative at first, and though the central section was more determined, it remained unhurried. In the third movement's dance, Lewis ensured that the repeated-note figures were boldly emphatic, while the trio section was delicate and wistful. The finale had an engagingly skippy character, as though trying to move on emotionally from what went before. Lewis made the climactic key-change not so much one of Schubert's usual invitations into a private space as something more decisive, before the gentle run-down at the end.

Copyright © 13 July 2024 Mike Wheeler,
Derby UK

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