András Schiff: Musikfest Berlin

О событии

The world renowned pianist, András Schiff, will perform works by Beethoven, Bartók, Janáček and Schubert at the "musikfest berlin 2011".

As a challenge – not just fulfilling the requirements of a set of rules but an opportunity to re‐interpret tradition – this was how Beethoven viewed the piano sonata. Accordingly, Beethoven bemused audiences in his Piano Sonata Op. 109 by turning customary conditions topsy‐turvy. Compared with his striking predecessor, Franz Schubert had a hard time in this genre displaying both character and individuality. In the first edition, his Sonata in G major was called “Fantasie, Andante, Menuetto and Allegro” in order not to bewilder Schubert’s public with the liberties he allowed himself. Béla Bartók also proved that wholly new content could be unfolded on the backcloth of a sonata. In his Piano Sonata, the composer and ethnomusicologist drew upon characteristic features of Hungarian folk music as building blocks for a radical modern style. The forces that drive this sonata are no longer based on the elements of traditional classical structure. Leoš Janáček, uncompromising and idiosyncratic in his music, placed his piano sonata subtitled “From the Street, 1 October 1905” in the service of an extra‐musical idea and limited himself to just two movements. The sonata is funeral music with a political background.

The same genre approached in completely different ways: to do justice to these four pieces on a single programme, each of which represents a microcosm in itself, demands technical flexibility, mastery, sensitivity and a great deal of experience. The Hungarian pianist András Schiff is richly endowed with all these qualities.


A joint event of IPPNW‐Concerts,
the musikfest berlin / Berliner Festspiele and the Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker as part of the IPPNW congress
"Hiroshima–Nagasaki–Majak–Harrisburg–Chernobyl –Fukushima:
The Responsibility of Medicine in the Nuclear Age" 16 to 18 September 2011