Schiff

Given his overwhelming passion for the music of Beethoven, it may seem surprising that András Schiff has waited so long to undertake a cycle of the composer’s piano sonatas. But Schiff, who deliberately deferred the project until he turned 50, views the years leading up to the cycle as a period of preparation and a natural consequence of the scope of Beethoven’s achievement. “Each sonata is a masterpiece of individualization and character,” he recently told Martin Meyer. “A pianist can successfully develop an appropriate sound for, say, Schubert or Chopin, but there is no one Beethoven sound: every work inhabits its own expressive world.”

When Schiff discusses this repertoire, he reveals not only profound knowledge of the subject but intense fervor. For him, Beethoven’s musical innovations are related to the emotional honesty the composer brought to his music, which led him to write in ways that were increasingly expressive, even suggesting heightened human speech. “Right from the start,” Schiff told Meyer, “the element of declamation comes strongly to the fore.”

Over Carnegie Hall’s next two seasons, Schiff will trace the full arc of Beethoven’s pianistic creativity. This season’s concerts, beginning on October 21, span the territory between the composer’s first sonatas—indebted to earlier masters like Haydn—and the “Moonlight” and “Pastoral” sonatas of 1801, in which Beethoven had reshaped the genre into a medium of unprecedented inwardness and dramatic power. In presenting the 32 sonatas in sequential order, Schiff offers concertgoers the rare opportunity to experience in real time, so to speak, one of the most astonishing artistic transformations in history.

“We can only marvel at the way this life’s work continually fans out into different constellations,” Schiff says of Beethoven. “As a result, the performer has to convey the meaning of every note: perhaps that’s where the greatest challenge lies.” At last, András Schiff has completed his journey to this greatest of pianistic challenges—and he is ready to take listeners on a journey of their own.