Wigmore Hall, London
It would do Andr�s Schiff an injustice to say that the best thing about this piano recital was the encore. But it was in many ways the most remarkable thing. At the end of an already demanding programme of major sets of variations by five different composers, culminating in Beethoven's incomparable Diabelli set, and with many of the audience already out of the door, Schiff sat once more at the keyboard and played, get this, the entire arietta and variations last movement of Beethoven's final piano sonata in C minor, Op 111.
Not since Sviatoslav Richter played the even longer final movement of the Hammerklavier sonata as an encore in the Festival Hall decades ago have I heard the like. Yet there was nothing distasteful or self-advertising about Schiff's choice, let alone his execution. The logic of his ambitious afterthought was, in fact, compelling, given that the arietta so closely resembles the harmonies of Diabelli's little waltz and that the Op 111 variations are on a pinnacle, even by Beethoven's standards.
The first half of Schiff's slightly schoolmasterly programme had begun with Mozart's insouciant Variations K500, gone up a gear with a formidable account of Mendelssohn's virtuosic Variations s�rieuses, taken a cantabile turn into Haydn's restrained F minor Andante and variations (beautifully judged by Schiff), before ending with the austere, almost heartbreaking melancholy of Schumann's last composition, his E flat variations. After the interval came the Diabelli Variations, given an uneven account that came together best in the later and more meditative variations. Finally, that encore, played with the directness and at the tempo Beethoven prescribes, and which too few observe. Not a perverse choice, but an almost perfect one.
oprah winfrey ellen degeneres dave chapelle george lopez jay leno
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