Please note: An illustrated, PDF version of the program notes is available on the Washington Performing Arts website.

Sir András Schiff, piano

BACH
Sinfonia No. 9 in F minor, BWV 795

BEETHOVEN
Sonata No. 12 in A-flat Major, Op. 26
I. Andante con variazioni
II. Scherzo. Allegro molto
III. Marcia funebre sulla morte d’un eroe. Maestoso andante
IV. Allegro

MOZART
Adagio in B minor, K. 540

BEETHOVEN
Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, Op. 110
I. Moderato cantabile molto espressivo
II. Allegro molto
III. Adagio ma non troppo – Allegro ma non troppo

FROM THE ARTIST

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Greetings to Washington, D.C.—the Washington Performing Arts Society, dear friends. It would be wonderful to be with you live, but unfortunately, due to the circumstances, this is not possible, so we will have to hope and wait for better times. This is also a great pleasure for me and an honor to be able to play for you a concert that was recorded and filmed last December in the city of Zürich, Switzerland, in a beautiful church: Peterskirche, the St. Peter Church.

The program is based on three of my favorite composers: Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven. First, you will hear Bach’s Sinfonia (or three-part invention) in F minor. I consider this to be one of the greatest works of Bach. In a little over two minutes, you have a great, great composition. This is very difficult for a great composer—to show what he can do in a very short span of time. And in this invention, you have all the tragedy and depth of the Bach Passions.

This will be followed by Beethoven’s Sonata, Opus 26, with the “Funeral March,” a wonderful composition from his younger years. Then you will hear Mozart’s B-minor Adagio, Köchel number 540. And the program closes with another Beethoven Sonata in A-flat Major—there are only two in A-flat Major. This is his penultimate sonata, Opus 110.

I hope you will find that these compositions are on the very, very highest level. To me, it’s very important to present nothing but the very best music, because life is too short for anything else.

– Sir András Schiff

(from his video introduction to the Home Delivery Plus performance)

PROGRAM NOTES

“Public and Private”

Composers sometimes write music for public performance and consumption, and sometimes they write out of deep personal necessity, creating music of an intensely private expression. The two halves of this program illustrate this perfectly.

Bach was not just a composer—he was also a teacher, and he wrote his Two-Part Inventions and Sinfonias for the instruction of his children. He said that he wanted his pupils “not only to be inspired with good inventions but to develop them properly; and most of all to achieve a cantabile manner of playing.” Over the last three centuries, millions of children (and adults!) have played and loved these little pieces, music originally written just for their instruction.

Beethoven composed his Piano Sonata in A-flat Major, Op. 26 in 1801 and published it immediately in Vienna—he was writing at least in part for the growing number of amateur pianists who would love to play music as attractive as this. Rather than opening with a powerful movement, he begins with a relaxed theme-and-variation movement—this music sets out to be agreeable rather than dramatic. Note particularly the third movement, which Beethoven titled “Funeral March on the Death of a Hero.” When he wrote this music, Beethoven could not have known that 26 years later it would be performed at his own funeral. Now, though, writing for a general audience in Vienna, Beethoven composes a good-natured sonata that—after all its energy—comes to a very calm conclusion.

Matters change sharply on the second half of this program. Mozart composed the Adagio in B minor in March 1788, at a crucial moment in his life. He had just seen the successful premiere of Don Giovanni, but now his fortunes were about to change. His music—thought “too highly spiced” by many—was about to go out of fashion in Vienna, and in just a few months he would be begging his friends for loans. Everything about this music is mysterious. No one knows why Mozart wrote this dark and expressive Adagio. It is in a key that he almost never used. Was this movement conceived as the first movement of a piano sonata that he abandoned? No one knows. What we do know is that this is some of the most inward and expressive music that Mozart ever wrote. 

When Beethoven completed the Piano Sonata in A-flat Major, Op. 101 that concludes this program, he was a very different composer (and person) from the young man who had written the sonata on the first half of this program—now he had been trapped in deafness for nearly ten years. Yet from out of that lonely silence Beethoven writes beautiful, heartfelt music. He stresses that the beginning of this sonata should be played con amabilita, which in music translates variously as “with love, with grace, with sweetness.” This sonata is not all sweetness and light, though. Its final movement—a complex fugue—reaches a climax that Beethoven marks Ermattet, klagend (“exhausted, grieving”). After this tension, Beethoven concludes with a great rush upward across five octaves to the triumphant final chord.

Public and private. This recital brings us four pieces composed for very different reasons and often sharply different in character. This music can be relaxed and open, and it can be inward and painful.

And in a sense this virtual recital illustrates that public and private distinction perfectly. We are used to concerts as “public” occasions when we are surrounded by a thousand other listeners, we see performers creating the music in our presence, and we feel the release that comes with the eruption of applause around us. By contrast, how relatively “private” this concert is! Sir András Schiff performs this music in a Swiss church in the presence of an intentionally sparse, socially distanced audience, and we hear it in our homes in the company of a few family members. Yet even in this private concert we can feel this music reaching out to us in ways that look ahead to that moment when we can once again experience music as that ideal public fusion of composer, performer, and listener.

– Eric Bromberger 

Eric Bromberger has been program annotator for Washington Performing Arts since 2000. He also writes program notes for the Minnesota Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, San Francisco Performances, University of Chicago Presents, and many other organizations. A violinist, he was a member of the La Jolla Symphony for 32 seasons.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Sir András Schiff is world-renowned as a pianist, conductor, pedagogue, and lecturer. Music critics and audiences alike continue to be inspired by the masterful and intellectual approach he brings to each masterpiece he performs. Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1953, Sir András studied piano at the Liszt Ferenc Academy with Pál Kadosa, György Kurtág, and Ferenc Rados; and in London with George Malcom. Recitals and special cycles, including the complete works of Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, and Bartók, constitute an important component of his work. Having collaborated with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, he now focuses primarily on solo recitals, play-conducting appearances, and exclusive conducting projects.

During his fall 2019 tour of North America, Sir András conducted and played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal, pairing concerti by Bach, Beethoven, and Haydn with Brahms’s Variations on a theme by Haydn and Bartók’s Dance Suite. He was joined by violinist Yuuko Shiokawa for an all-Mozart program opening New York’s 92nd Street Y season.

Vicenza is home to Cappella Andrea Barca—his own chamber orchestra consisting of international soloists, chamber musicians, and friends, founded in 1999. They have appeared together at Carnegie Hall, the Lucerne Festival, and the Salzburg Mozartwoche. Forthcoming projects include a tour of Asia and a cycle of Bach’s keyboard concertos in Europe.

Sir András enjoys close relationships with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. In 2018, he accepted the role of Associate Artist with the OAE, complementing his interest in performing on period keyboard instruments.

He has established a prolific discography and has been an exclusive artist for ECM New Series and its producer, Manfred Eicher, since 1997. Highlights have included the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas recorded live in Zurich, solo recitals of Schubert, Schumann, and Janáček, as well as J.S. Bach’s Partitas, Goldberg Variations, and Well-Tempered Clavier. His most recent two-disc set of Schubert Sonatas and Impromptus was released in spring 2019.

He continues to support new talent, primarily through his “Building Bridges” series, which gives performance opportunities to promising young artists. He also teaches at the Barenboim-Said and Kronberg academies and gives frequent lectures and masterclasses. In 2017, his book Music Comes from Silence, a compilation of essays and conversations with Martin Meyer, was published by Barenreiter and Henschel.

Sir András Schiff’s many honors include the international Mozarteum Foundation’s Gold Medal (2012), Germany’s Great Cross of Merit with Star (2012), the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Gold Medal (2013), a Knighthood for Services to Music (2014), and a Doctorate from the Royal College of Music (2018). 

ABOUT THE HOST 

Anastasia Tsioulcas is an NPR Arts reporter and the Series Host of Home Delivery Plus 2021. Tsioulcas’s NPR roles have included interviews with the likes of composers Steve Reich and Terry Riley and, as a former reporter and producer for NPR Music, production of episodes of the popular Tiny Desk Concert series. For Home Delivery Plus, she lends her insights to a number of performance “packages,” from introducing the events to moderating post-performance talks to curating Spotify playlists inspired by package artists and themes.

EVENT SPONSORS 

This performance is made possible through the generous support of Jeanne Weaver Ruesch, the Dan Cameron Family Foundation, Dr. Mark Cinnamon and Ms. Doreen Kelly, Dr. Irene Roth and Dr. Vicken Poochikian, and Gary and Silvia Yacoubian and SVS Home Audio.

Linger Longers on Home Delivery Plus are made possible through the generous support of an anonymous donor.

This performance is one of six Home Delivery Plus events in 2020/21 included in Washington Performing Arts’s World in Our City initiative, which promotes cross-cultural understanding and cultural diplomacy via international performances, globally inspired Mars Arts D.C. programming, and the award-winning Embassy Adoption Program, a partnership with D.C. Public Schools.

SERIES SPONSORS 

Thank you to the following lead supporters of Washington Performing Arts’s mission-driven work in 2020/21, including presentation of Home Delivery Plus: Jacqueline Badger Mars and Mars, Incorporated; D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities; Betsy and Robert Feinberg; Dr. Gary Mather and Ms. Christina Co Mather; the National Capital Arts and Cultural Affairs Program and the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts; Tom Gallagher; The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; and the Dallas Morse Coors Foundation for the Performing Arts.