Sir András Schiff plays Mozart and Bach
Recital at Wigmore Hall
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Cast
Sir András Schiff — Pianist
Program notes
Catch the always incredible Sir András Schiff in a sublime recital from London's Wigmore Hall! The prestigious venue resounds with a cannily chosen selection of works by Mozart and Bach, in which the great pianist and pedagogue ties each work to the next via tonal relationships.
Following a harmonic route that links the whole program together, Schiff begins with the mythical Musical Offering, a work dedicated to the King of Prussia in which Bach's astonishing contrapuntal gifts are on display from the very first ricercar (an early kind of fugue) for three voices. In the same key, Mozart's dark Fantasia in C Minor offers a kaleidoscoping palette of tonal colors, made even more vivid by Schiff's legendary musicianship.
Next, he connects Bach's French Suite in G with a small Mozart gigue written in Leipzig, where Bach worked and spent a large part of his life—an “homage to the master”—before moving to B Minor, a key that Bach associates with tragedy and suffering, and in which Mozart only dabbled with the K. 540 Adagio. Finally, Schiff guides us firmly into the light with the Sonata K. 533 in F (“the most Bachian of Mozart's sonatas," for the Hungarian master), Bach's Partita in B-flat Major serving as a perfect counterpart.
Photo: Sir András Schiff © Nadia F. Romanini