Metropolitan Museum
Mr. Schiff played the two most popular of the major-key sonatas: The A Major and the C Major. He manufactured a sonata of his own from the smaller of the D minor Fantasies (he played the bigger one as an encore), the B minor Adagio and the Rondo in D. There was also the heaven-sent A-minor Rondo, the powerful A minor Sonata and, at the end, the Variations in G, prime Mozart that needs more exposure than it gets.
Sober thinking after the fact tells the critic that there were too many intelligent decisions about all kinds of details for these performances just to have happened. First of all, Mr. Schiff reads what Mozart says. The familiar ''Alla turca'' of the Sonata in A is marked ''allegretto'' -- somewhere between a brisk stroll and a slow trot. It is not the racecourse for eager, nimble fingers it usually becomes; Mr. Schiff replaced the breathless with the casual. Similarly, the Andante movement of the A minor Sonata, sad though its message, specifically asks that its tempo walk as it did here, not trudge.
There were also the lovely shadings of scale and graceful hesitations joining one section to another. This is a reasonably small hall, and Mr. Schiff never tried to overpower listeners. He has the technique for Mozart, which is difficult not in the way of Rachmaninoff or Balakirev, but for being mercilessly transparent, susceptible to the smallest vulgarity or malfunction. If this concert had been less good, this review would be longer. But so successful was the evening that the critic can only throw up his hands, wish you had been there, and quote Ira Gershwin's endearing tombstone inscription: ''Words Fail Me.''
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