![]() ![]() Just before you think the reverberation cannot last any longer, it goes on for more. I can’t remember being so spellbound by a performance’s last note than I was by the sounds slowly fading from András Schiff’s fingers in Schubert’s a major Piano sonata, D.459. “In Schubert Schiff has a claim to be considered sovereign among today’s players, carrying forward the reading and interpretation of him into areas that others have not fully explored.” There is something quintessentially Viennese in its timbre, its tender mellowness, its melancholic cantabilità.” Critics have agreed, unanimous also in their praise of Schiff’s interpretations: “I cannot think of anyone of his calibre who has mastered the fortepiano as well as the modern piano and shown such distinction on both,” wrote Stephen Plaistow in an Editor’s Choice review in Gramophone. ![]() “It is to me ideally suited to Schubert’s keyboard works,” he has said. Schiff again chooses to use his fortepiano made by Franz Brodmann in Vienna, around 1820. Nothing more was needed – this was pianism and music making at its finest.In the latest chapter in András Schiff’s ongoing documentation of Franz Schubert’s music, the great pianist plays the Four Impromptus D 899, and compositions from 1828, the last year of Schubert’s too brief life: The Three Pieces D 946 (“impromptus in all but name” notes Misha Donat in the CD booklet), the C minor Sonata D 958 and the A major Sonata D 959. Throughout the whole performance Zilberstein showed superb judgement and command of her material with nothing superfluous – no histrionics, a calm half-smile on her face and an economy of gesture. ![]() 10 and the definitive, emphatic final prelude. In a little over half an hour these self-contained pieces run the gamut of emotions and pianistic textures, from the lovely transparent Chopinesque No. If the Schubert had got the heart singing and the blood coursing there was more to follow after interval when Zilberstein was very much on her home turf with Sergei Rachmaninov’s 13 Préludes Op. The bleakly majestic Der Wanderer, with its rumbling left hand arpeggios, and the bird calls of St ändchen von Shakespeare were a mere warm-up to the hypnotic spinning motif of Gretchen am Spinnrade and the emotional heft of Auf dem Wasser zu singen which closed the first half of the concert. If the Moderato opening was delicately etched, Zilberstein turned the power on halfway through the Allegro moderato third piece, signalling that there were fireworks to come later in the programme when she got to Franz Liszt’s settings of favourite Schubert songs. Its gently hesitant fanfare-like opening was beautifully judged. Her immaculate pedigree was immediately apparent when she took the stage and launched into the first of Franz Schubert’s Moments musicaux. She is also a holder of the Accademia Musicale Chigiana Prize in Siena, alongside – among others – Gidon Kremer, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Krystian Zimerman – and is the first woman to chair the classical piano department at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Her collaborations with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and as a duettist with Martha Argerich have won her accolades. Born in Moscow and resident in Germany, the 58-year-old first caused a sensation in 1987 when she won the Busoni Competition in Bolzano, Italy, opening up a star-studded career both on stage and in the studio where she has notched up an impressive discography with Deutsche Grammophon.īut it’s not only as a soloist that she has made her mark. ![]()
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