Music Review | Andras Schiff : Following The Twists Of A Master’s Sonatas

The Beethoven piano sonatas tell a story, but which story is a matter of debate. Andras Schiff played the first 4 of the 32 sonatas at Carnegie Hall on Sunday afternoon and will keep on playing them in the order in which they were written, or at least the order in which they were published, in concerts to come.

Are these pieces a shadow autobiography, following the highs and lows of a mans life? Not really. The dark tone and distant key of the very first sonata (in F minor) belongs more in temperament to the grim dramas of Beethovens middle period (the Waldstein, the Appassionata) or even to the late-early Pathétique. It is also instructive to look ahead to scaled-down gems like Opus 78 and Opus 79, both exuding a charm and an innocence hard to square with the personal despair from which they emerged.

Are the sonatas a chronology of growing mastery? From apprenticeship to discovery to a new world at the end: It is a popular theory, but I wonder. The C major Sonata (Op. 2, No. 3), played before intermission, has a generosity and an inventiveness that are at least a match for the sonatas to come. It also houses one of Beethovens great slow movements. Mr. Schiffs wordless acknowledgment of its worth came in the elegance and respect he devoted to it on Sunday.

Do the sonatas represent an evolution of style, a letting go of old formats, a search for the how more than the what, the gradual invention of languages appropriate to a musical imagination that Beethoven possessed from the beginning? This may be closer to the truth. Mr. Schiffs use of the intermission to separate the three sonatas of Opus 2 from the No. 4 (in E flat, Op. 7) underlined a sudden increase in sheer size. The dimensions leap from the Mozartean to the Romantically symphonic. The length is impressive. Big enters Beethovens vocabulary.

Op. 2, No. 3, played just before it, was the afternoons piece closest to Haydns gentlemanly world, even though it was in the process of leaving that world behind. Like the Opus 7 Sonata, it is very difficult music, its flourishes calculated to promote Beethoven the young pianistic whiz as much as Beethoven the composer. Haydn was only incidentally a pianist, as the modesty of his technical demands made clear.

Mr. Schiff has thought long and lovingly about how to make this music emerge naturally. His calm virtuosity served texts, not a pianists image. So devoted is he to beautiful piano sound that you wished every once in a while for a touch of ugliness — a little more of Beethovens rough-and-tumble side. I also think some of his tempos were too fast, but then, he would think mine too slow.

Andras Schiff continues the Beethoven sonatas tomorrow night at Carnegie Hall; (212) 247-7800 or carnegiehall.org.

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