Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • Page 4-16

16 CHICAGO By David Patrick Stearns NEWS SERVICE BETHESDA, Andras Schiff invites great composers into his life like artists in years at a with comprehensive, often undivided attention. The current object of his artistic serial monogamy is 32 sonatas: By next spring he will have played 20 complete cycles around the world over the last few years, as well as many miscellaneous one-offs. Some eight years in preparation, Beethoven sonata recordings for mostly live in the resonant acoustics of the Zurich complete this month. Considering that Beethoven was never more cantankerous than in his piano sonatas, these cycles be easy to live with. One recent day, you could almost feel Beethoven crowding the small sitting area in Bethesda hotel room.

But with the practicality of a committed caretaker, the pianist lives with the rough-and- tumble fugues that can be so feral, so in the final movement of the infamous they look like several pieces accidentally printed on top of each other. love pieces like that and maybe my he says in his shy, deliberate manner. you have a background in Bach, as I do, then it is just another fugue. very complex. Very long.

And impossibly difficult. The Ham- merklavier is a struggle with the Mozart and Chopin are also sublime but tougher to live with, Schiff says, because they demand note- perfect performances. forgives us our sins. He gives us more room. Beethoven takes risks and grabs you by the throat, but you can make all kind of mistakes and still get the large Schiff speaks in such a gentle, considered avoiding contractions, as in his meticulous musical phrasing, where every note has its rightful the violence of Beethoven seems wrong for him.

In fact, having played the sonatas here and there over the years, he waited until his late 40s to have his immersion with the singular view of a pianist who comes to Beethoven chronologically, rather than looking backward from Rachmaninoff. J.S. Bach was starting point and calling card for years after he emerged in the 1980s. No pianist since Glenn Gould or Rosalyn Tureck had such a consistent relationship with that composer, and at a time when playing Bach on piano (as opposed to the more historically accurate harpsichord) was considered wrong. In fact, mainstream symphony orchestra audiences had been, to some extent, alienated from Bach until Schiff came along, conducting Bach concertos from the keyboard with a charm that trumped academic arguments.

Longtime Philadelphia Orchestra violinist Davyd Booth describes of from piano in Bach-centered guest engagements. Nobody could have predicted this phenomenon coming from Hungary, known for such stentorian pianists as Dezso Ranki and Zoltan Kocsis, who enjoyed the lasting international appeal of the more demure Schiff. His sense of polyphonic clarity uncovers qualities that were always there but somehow not really in Piano Concerto No. 1, which makes a heroic impression in hands without traditionally heroic sounds. Given the dividends of that chronological approach, he plays Beethoven sonatas only in order of composition.

The advantages may seem academic to audiences, but give Schiff any number of unexpected points of entry. When working on the three Op. 31 sonatas, Schiff noticed that the first of them turned its back on the pared-down concision Beethoven had been working toward with expansive, wildly ornamented melodies. Surveying the landscape of time, Schiff decided the composer was sending up lightweight opera composers then hugely successful in Vienna. The surprise of his Beethoven is its humor, which he might have missed without this immersion process.

get to know the composer so well, it becomes second nature, like a mother he says. do know by now when Beethoven is serious, when he is joking, when he is desperate, and when he is melancholy. You know, I cannot tell you why. I think that humor is a very serious thing. Telling jokes is kind of an As important as this experience has been for Schiff, he swears practice a new-found selectivity after next post-Beethoven sabbatical.

Those six months, he says, will include lots of Shakespeare plays in London, learning late-period Diabelli Variations, and most important, embracing not in a complete cycle: have the urge anymore for that. I also want to play repertoire I have done before and do it deeper and with more In many ways, Schiff is a master of artistic mediation. Few pianists are as immediately recognizable, but never does he bend composers to his will. They might emerge from his piano seeming neater, nattier and better groomed. But these qualities are flattering rather than falsifying because Schiff chooses composers by carefully heeding his own instincts.

Schiff has ventured into conducting in recent years, but not beyond a handful of masterworks such as Mass in minor or a Beethoven piano concerto conducted from the keyboard. know exactly my he says, And Others should be so lucky. CLASSICAL MUSIC Andras Schiff gives Beethoven that lived-in sound Pianist Andras Schiff performs a sampling of his ECM recordings of Beethoven sonatas at Symphony Center Sunday. Andras Schiff The art of artistic meditation When: 3 p.m. Sunday Where: Symphony Center, 220 S.

Michigan Ave. Price: 312-294-3000 or cso.org PAID BY THE HOUR? SO Why not get paid by the minute? )R L0R JLR FPaP (A HN MG J- 5G9OCI MG MG MG MG MG JL 4GG 5G9OCIA MG JL JNN' The Casino Total Rewards The Everything www.HarrahsJoliet.com Product: CTOTT PubDate: 10-31-2008 Zone: Edition: FRI Page: ACARTS-16 User: cci Time: Color:.