Over the last decade András Schiff has made some fascinating forays into the possibilities of historically informed performance, in repertoire from Haydn piano sonatas to Brahms concertos, using instruments that have ranged from an 1820 fortepiano that once belonged to the last emperor of Austro-Hungary, to a Blüthner grand made in the middle of the 19th century. Schubert sonatas featured prominently in those forays, and now Schiff has turned his attention to the same composer’s chamber music, performing the two late piano trios, the B flat D898 and the E flat D929 on a fortepiano, with violinist Erich Höbarth and cellist Christophe Coin.
The fortepiano that Schiff was playing was not identified in the programme, but it was certainly an instrument with a beautifully even tone, almost bell-like in its upper registers, and with a well-defined, almost reedy bass. It allowed Schiff to provide the launching pad for both these performances, whether giving a springing vitality to the opening movement of the B flat trio, or attacking the E flat with forthright intensity, and regularly providing pearly decoration to the strings’ melodic lines, together with Höbarth’s little touches of portamento and Coin’s self-effacing security.
Both trios are substantial, but the darker, more ambiguous E flat work is much harder to get right in performance. Even these musicians couldn’t quite dispel the suspicion that its last movement goes on just a bit too long, and that Schubert really does repeat the device of bringing back the Swedish folk song first heard in the Andante just once too often, even though Coin’s beautiful, veiled treatment of that melancholy theme was always a quiet delight.
But that’s a minor quibble about performances that got an awful lot right, and also sounded so right. There’s never any sense with Schiff that when he plays a fortepiano he is doing anything other than interpreting the music just as truthfully as he would on a modern concert grand; there was no sense of special pleading or making allowances here, it was a real treat.
