- Seán Keane
- jazz band music
- Astor Piazzolla
- Ferdinand Hérold
- Margarita Voites
- Pierre Fournier
- Black Butte Ranch
- Medtner: Canzona Serenata
Fresh and Uniquely Inspiring
MALCOLM MILLER was at London's Royal Festival Hall for music by Mendelssohn and Schumann, played by András Schiff and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Sir András Schiff gave a performance to relish as soloist and conductor with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment [OAE] at a well-filled Royal Festival Hall [London, UK] on 22 May 2025, in a memorable concert featuring works by Schumann and Mendelssohn. This final leg of the OAE's eight-city European tour featured Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto and less often played Konzertstück Op 92 played on an early piano, as well as a selection from Felix Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream music. The concert was poignantly dedicated, as double bassist Cecelia Bruggemeyer explained, to the memory of two distinguished musicians and former OAE members who had recently passed away, cellist David Watkin and theorboist Dai Miller.
The chief point of interest of the Leipzig-centred programme was Schiff's choice of a restored Southern German circa 1859 Blüthner 'fortepiano', straight strung and, at 2.5 metres, very long. Schiff has long advocated refining the art of listening by drawing on different piano sonorities. Earlier instruments, he argues, have more subtle nuances of timbre across the registers than the modern Steinway (or similar) grand. On this occasion the Blüthner produced a distinctive tone, powerful yet ringing, clear in the bass and top and emerging clearly through the transparent textures of the period orchestra. The high registers penetrated with brightness even though there was a certain element of 'restored' sound to it, pure toned yet resisting the singing resonance of a new instrument. The bass was strong, warm, often projected with extreme clarity penetrating across the thick orchestral bass textures. From the very start there was a sense of chamber music interaction, whilst throughout the evening Schiff's assured pianism elicited responsive playing from the orchestra which often initiated gestures, intuiting collectively exactly where and how to engage with the piano, thus allowing Schiff freedom to explore the instrument's colour. In both concertante works, the piano's colours kept the soundscape alert and alive, in the case of the concerto, injecting fresh imaginative sounds into familiar masterpiece.
András Schiff and the Orchestra of the Age of
Enlightenment at London's Royal Festival Hall
on 22 May 2025. Photo © 2025 Bea Lewkowicz
The Konzertstück Op 92 is a great, if unfamiliar work, comprising a slow introduction and sonata Allegro, the different themes here vividly characterised. The slow introduction features a beautiful theme showing off the OAE's wind section - solo flute, oboe, clarinet and horn - and then rich strings, doubled by the piano's melody Schiff etched out of the quintessentially Schumannesque flowing arpeggios, gradually adding wisps of melody and a richer bass, to assert its solo role for the resplendent main Allegro. With the more boisterous motive and impetus, András Schiff jumped from his seat to cue in the chromatic woodwind harmonies, shaped eloquently to cast luminous mystery over the proceedings. The lyrical qualities of the development were enthralling, with a sudden resurgence of energy for the recapitulation, the richness of Schumann's harmony glistening in technicolor in Schiff's articulation and emphasis, and a return to the luscious solo horn and clarinet timbres in the coda.
Mendelssohn's more familiar music for A Midsummer's Night Dream (without the Wedding March) was again engrossing for its vivid textures, Schiff's conducting displaying the detail and delicacy of his pianism translated into the orchestral palette. Interesting details were pointed up, unexpected accents - often from the horns and ophicleide - enlivened the gossamer texture like flashes of radiant light through a romantic mist. Performing all repeats, the Overture acquired purposeful dynamism unlike more decorative readings, with fizzing strings and skimpish woodwind, and the framing chordal passage for two flutes that blossom into full wind adding telling flavour to the OAE's rarified HIP sound world. Highlights included the delicacy of the Intermezzo, the horns' radiant tone in the Nocturne, and the Scherzo's fairy tale pointillism, picturesque colours conjured up masterly. Schiff eschews a baton and uses his hands as on the keyboard yet traversing the invisible air in gestures conveying the tiniest of articulations.
The final work, Schumann's Piano Concerto, bounded propulsively along, the sheer tempo of the first movement keeping me at the edge of my seat, the phrase rather than the beat as the main pulse, with telling use of rubato to evoke a Romantic ebb and flow. The Blüthner's unusual colouring came to the fore, whilst lacking the resonance of the modern grand, its penetrating power in the first movement made its punchy point both in leaping gestures, reinforcements of the lower bass octaves which Schiff deliberately etched and in duets with orchestral clarinet and subsequent thematic development. After the poised lightness of the second movement with its poetic piano-orchestra echoes, the finale with its jaunty syncopations leapt into action with breathtaking virtuoso racing figurations, full of élan and panache, a reading that was joyful and exuberant, fresh and uniquely inspiring.
After the enthusiastic ovation Schiff returned to relax the mood in a fascinating encore - an early piano miniature by Brahms, discovered around a decade ago, reminiscent of the Horn Trio and perhaps its source - with caressing tremolandi and rich harmony. A second encore - this time Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture - offered a special reward for those audience who remained, drawing exciting colour from the OAE's period instruments, full of detail and sweep, momentum and energy, rounding off an inspiring immersion in the Romantic soundworld.
Copyright © 28 May 2025
Malcolm Miller,
London, UK
