There are so many rich layers of composition, interpretation and performance to be discerned in the contents of these wonderful Schubert offerings on CD from András Schiff, the performer who has already done so much before this over the past few decades to promote Schubert’s piano music. His superb performances here are marked by his evident deep love both of the music and of the instrument on which it is played, an 1820 Viennese fortepiano by Franz Brodmann, in Schiff’s own possession, recorded in the ideal conditions of the Kammermusiksaal H.J. Abs at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn.

As the press release (ECM New Series, US Release [2 June 2015]) and the CD liner notes make clear, these recordings mark a highly significant stage in Schiff’s relationship with the period instrument. His contribution on the subject to the liner notes (‘Confessions of a Convert’) compares his sceptical response to the somewhat indiscriminate enthusiasm with which the historical performance movement was generally regarded in the early 1980s – a movement which at that time aroused in him both fascination and irritation – with the ‘life-changing experience’ of playing and recording Mozart on the composer’s own Walter fortepiano towards the end of that decade. Thus was he set on the path towards searching for further extant examples of the instrument from the period of Mozart and Schubert, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, ‘hidden in museums, foundations and private collections, many of them in prime condition’. His searches confirmed him in the belief that ‘getting to know them is essential for the student, the scholar, the musician: it is a conditio sine qua non’.

He writes eloquently of the diversity and individual character he found in the instruments he discovered; of the special effects such instruments can offer; and of the elements in their design (for instance their narrower keys) which render them potentially an ideal match for the kind of writing for piano found in repertoire of the period. However, while hoping that he will encourage more of his audience to become ‘converts’, he acknowledges that not every performer will wish to give up their allegiance to the modern instrument (and indeed he himself doesn’t intend to do so). And in this regard the venue – especially its size – must play a part in the appropriate choice of instrument. But the difference the fortepiano has made to his thinking will still, he tells us, furnish the mental backdrop to his playing on ‘the Bösendorfers, Bechsteins, [and] Steinways’; and the wish to create ‘the illusion of intimacy in a large auditorium’ will be a part of this awareness.

The two CDs are neatly and delectably arranged, each containing a substantial sonata together with a selection of shorter piano pieces, featuring one complete set on each CD: the six Moments musicaux (D. 780) on CD 1, and the second set of Impromptus (D. 935) on CD 2; and with one individual piece at the start of each, the evocative Ungarische Melodie in B minor (D. 817; written in Zseliz, September 1824) on CD 1 and the tiny, expressive Allegretto in C minor (D. 915; April 1827) on CD 2. All the works presented on the discs date from the years between 1823 and 1828 (Schubert’s final year), and together they form a substantial proportion of the piano music produced by Schubert in his last decade, music that is full of his stylistic ‘fingerprints’: the major–minor effects, the violent outbursts, the ‘heavenly lengths’ that Robert Schumann so admired, and the song-like treatment of form and substance. All these features are enhanced by the fortepiano’s qualities.

CD 1 features the G major Sonata (D. 894) of 1826, a work that in its often reflective and at other times highly dramatic character, and its leisurely unfolding, forms the gateway to the last three sonatas of 1828. The G major Sonata has been dubbed, by Robert Hatten, Schubert’s ‘Pastoral’ Sonata.Footnote ¹ It’s a work that has perhaps tended to be less conspicuous in the recital repertoire and in musicological discourse, in comparison with the attention given to the final three sonatas, D. 958, D. 959 and D. 960, which Alfred Brendel in his performances and recordings helped rescue from relative neglect. CD 2 ends with the last of these, D. 960 in B flat major.

Listening to these recordings I was reminded of the remark made by Jeremy Montagu (former curator of the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Music) to the effect that hearing performances of early music on original instruments was like viewing a centuries-old picture that had been cleaned, its colours made to look fresh and bright. The range of sound colour that Schiff creates in his performances on the period instrument is characterized by exceptional strength, warmth and light, responding with sensitivity and a notable clarity to the demands of Schubert’s idiomatic writing for the pianos of his time. To enumerate the many details in the music on these discs that benefit enormously from the instrument’s qualities in Schiff’s performances would fill far more than the space allotted for this review. I will simply give a summary, illustrating the main points with examples in the music taken from what can only be a small selection.

Schubert likes quiet: not only the standard pp marking for intensification but often ppp. Schiff’s instrument possesses, as well as its una corda, a moderator, the muffling device that has the capacity to produce a distinctive muted effect. While the lovely opening chords in the first movement of the G major Sonata (marked pp) are gentle yet resonant in Schiff’s performance, an offshoot of the opening idea transformed harmonically (at bar 10), now in B minor and marked ppp, is bathed in soft light. The chording in much of this opening section, featuring parallel movement in sixths contained within the octave doubling of the top line, is evocative of Brahms’s piano writing. To my ears the parallel sixths in the left hand’s ‘tenor’ register during the initial statement of the second theme (bars 34 and following) sound richer than I have ever heard them. Thirds, too, have a remarkable warmth when strategically positioned, as with the low-placed right-hand thirds in the cadence that closes the meditative version of the first theme heard at the end of the exposition in D. 894, first movement, or those in the opening bars of the slow movement (Andante sostenuto) of the B flat Sonata, D. 960. The textures explored in this latter movement particularly highlight the way each octave on the keyboard has its own colour.

Schubert’s linking of thematic transformations with dynamic contrasts is powerfully conveyed in these performances. In D. 894, first movement, when the opening theme returns (bar 21), marked forte in a startling long-range contrast with its original appearance, the ‘caesura-fill’ in the preceding bar, with its descending scale placed low in the left hand, builds drama beforehand through registral colour, as well as by the crescendo that Schubert prescribes. When the opening theme bursts in at the beginning of the development section (following the exposition’s quiet cadence), now ff and in G minor, it is as if pent-up power is being released. A shattering transformation occurs when the originally mournful F sharp minor section of the Moment musical in A flat major (D. 780, no. 2) returns later unexpectedly at forte volume after the A flat section on its return has made all the signals of moving towards ending the whole piece. Schiff maximizes the shock effect.

Schiff is altogether ‘at home’ in the topical universe that Schubert creates in these works. Dance topics are particularly pervasive, certainly not restricted exclusively to minuet or scherzo movements. Schiff’s performances highlight the differing character of these dance-inspired passages (or, indeed, whole movements). The filigree variation on the second theme of the G major Sonata, first movement, together with its unmistakable waltz accompaniment, is done by Schiff con amore, and made to sound very Viennese, as well as seeming to evoke an otherworldly dance (perhaps in a dream, like that presented by ‘Frühlingstraum’ in Winterreise): its placement in the higher registers lends itself especially to this ethereal effect. In more robust style, the rondo theme of the B flat major Sonata’s finale dances irrepressibly in and out again in Schiff’s hands as it gives way, first to the lied-like ‘B’ theme and then to the abrupt explosions of the ‘C’ section – all beautifully and powerfully characterized, before it returns; while the B flat Sonata’s Scherzo (Allegro vivace con delicatezza) dances along in the high registers on the lightest of ‘feet’, and the final Impromptu in F minor (D. 935, no. 4; Allegro scherzando) bounces along, dancing unstoppably throughout with irresistible energy.

Schiff’s playing makes Schubert’s instrumental writing (infused as it is with the influence of the lied) truly sing on the piano. Passages of melody and accompaniment texture benefit from the registral contrasts these embody. While the dislocation of right and left hands that was once a sine qua non of Romantic piano performance could be seriously disturbing (Kenneth Hamilton has highlighted the liberal use of this ‘asynchronization’ technique evident in Leschetizky’s piano rolls, where ‘the left hand regularly comes in with its bass note before the right-hand tune begins’),Footnote ² Schiff’s slightly staggered hands for moments or larger stretches of particular tenderness seems absolutely perfect. Besides the cantabile melodic line, Schubert creates duet textures, as in the F minor Impromptu (D. 935, no. 1). Its third thematic component, heard in A flat minor then major in the first rotation, and recapitulated later in the tonic minor and major, was identified by John Daverio as an evocative ‘dialogue without words’, similar to Felix Mendelssohn’s Duetto in the Lieder ohne Worte.Footnote ³ Here too, Schiff’s performance truly sings. And in Schubert’s ‘water music’ (whether cascading, or rippling along, typically in moto perpetuo semiquavers, as with large stretches of the Moments musicaux and the Impromptus, as well as the sonatas – the first movement of the B flat Sonata [D. 960] for instance) each note – each droplet – sounds with lovely crystal clarity.

It is a moving and exciting experience to hear such committed performances as are on these discs – by a performer committed both to Schubert’s vision as a composer and to the wondrous possibilities of the instrument that inspired it.