EIF: Leif Ove Andsnes and Bertrand Chamayou
Queen’s Hall - 22/08/23
In late summer 1986, at the end of a thrilling cycle tour of Norway, I and my violist companion were making our way from Bergen to its airport and chanced on Troldhaugen, Grieg’s former home, now a museum to Norway’s national composer with a concert hall in the grounds. Back then, the house itself was the museum and the summerhouse in the grounds held Grieg’s own Steinway and was used for recitals for small audiences. As luck would have it, a recital of a selection of Grieg Lyric Pieces by a (to us) unknown young Norwegian pianist was about to begin and we had loads of time, so we stayed. He was excellent and we agreed that we would be hearing more of him. The pianist’s name: Leif Ove Andsnes. He was only 16 in 1986.
At the beginning of this summer, French pianist Bertrand Chamayou guested in three concerts with the Belcea String Quartet at the East Neuk Festival, playing solo Liszt, Debussy and Ravel and playing in Fauré’s Piano Quintet, to great acclaim, including mine, from my first time seeing him live.
These two pianistic giants united at lunchtime on Tuesday 22nd August at the Queen’s Hall, in a four-hands duet programme of late Schubert masterpieces interspersed with György Kurtág miniatures from his Játékok (Games) collections.
Of the four Schubert pieces performed, the Rondo in A D951 is the sunniest, radiating a naïve insouciance with at first no overt trace of irony, though a central section hints at inner turmoil. Leif took the treble line with its glittering ornamentation. Even in this music of innocence (which with Schubert never goes long unpunished) there was unanimity of musical voice and phrasing, the two players playing as one. This doesn’t just happen. It needs work and commitment and an element of chemistry. Clearly this artistic rapport is there. Bertrand is 11 years Leif’s junior.
The first set of Kurtág pieces comprised 5 solo sketches played by Leif, followed by 3 four-handed with Bertrand on the treble line. Is this plinky-plonk music? It is rather, but these are like keenly observed line drawings, whimsically brief, with more hinted than stated. Would I travel 100 miles to hear a programme of nothing else? Definitely not. But as a skilfully-performed palate-cleanser between the poignant musings of a terminally ill Schubert, they were just the job. Any further description would be longer than the pieces themselves.
Schubert’s Allegro in A-minor, with Bertrand at the treble helm, is a beefier work with a sonata-form feel, a dramatic stormy opening giving way to a lovely lyrical hymn-like melody, with the typical Schubert ploys of wandering of into remote keys and phrases in a major key being laden with more pathos than those in the minor (how does he do that?). The drama and the repose battle it out, but the return of the lyrical theme at the end with soft-spoken stoicism was heartstoppingly beautiful. Once again, four hands, one voice.
First up after the interval, Schubert’s Fugue in E minor D952, with Bertrand on the treble line, is quite brief and clearly Bach-influenced. Troubled, but meditative. Self-care with Bach: Schubert not the first or the last. Another 8 Kurtág sketches, 5 solo from Bertrand and 3 four-handers with Leif in the treble seat this time followed and did the job for which they were designed.
The real meat of the program was left till last: Schubert’s F-minor Fantasie D940. It is one work but can be seen as four movements played without a break. A rueful hesitant melody suggests Schubert holding it together with difficulty, twice interrupted with more anxious outbursts. In the slow ‘movement’, it is the outer sections that are troubled and filled with foreboding, with a serenity finding expression in the centre. The scherzo is a Landler, with an air of mirthless forced jollity, one going through the motions and “keeping on keeping on”. A return to the opening theme appears to herald a slump into despair, but instead it launches a fugue, still rueful but also defiant with its compelling inner logic. Schubert knows he is dying but is determined to exit in an explosion of self-extinguishing creativity. The final tortured minor cadence is fateful but determined.
The F-minor Fantasie is an extraordinary work, with intellectual and emotional elements and an unwinnable struggle. It received an extraordinary interpretation, I would say (and it is the third live performance I’ve attended in two years) the best yet. As I say, four hands, one voice, and that voice was Schubert’s. I am very grateful to have been present to hear it.
Two short encores administered musical first aid in the form of two Kurtág arrangements of Bach chorale prelude fragments. Simple and effective.
Cover photo: Gregor Hohenberg