András Schiff - Haydn: Piano Sonatas Nos 59-62, Fantasia in C major (2003)

Andras Schiff is a pianist of great musicality and fine technique. I bought this album because I love the Haydn piano sonatas and have played them all my life. I trust Schiff to provide a solid and responsible interpretation of the music. I heard a youtube video of the Fantasia and realized that I had never played it, so I got the music and learned it. This recording helped me get the sound image in my mind, but I think Schiff puts in some triplets in the arpeggios that really are not there. That would divide the measures into two beats instead of the three that are really there. But it seems inconsistent throughout the piece. Sometimes it seems in the proper three beats and others it seems to be two. The measures take the correct amount of time; it is just where Schiff puts the accents. And I am sure these arpeggios can be justified as a kind of free cadenza. Still …
The late sonatas are marvelous and have been one of the joys of the Classic Period for performing pianists for centuries. As I hear Schiff play them I do not ever get the sense that he is just going through them as a toss off of something overly familiar. He is in completely and fully in command of the music and makes me hear his playing as if the music is fresh to his mind, as well.
These performances are tasteful in their ornamentation and stick to the score as the best scholarship has presented these works to us. Some early music specialists feel free to improvise on this music, some more than others. And that is OK. But for my tastes, I want to hear what Haydn said in the score with the artists revealing his or her own mind and heart through what Haydn actually wrote rather than a riff on it.
One of the great misconceptions that modern listeners have of Haydn is that because they think of his music as “predictable” by them he is somehow unoriginal and, heaven forfend, boring. This is akin to the gentleman brought reluctantly to hear “Hamlet” for the first time by his family and afterwards was asked what he thought of the play. He said he didn’t know what all the fuss was about that the play was just a bunch of quotes strung together.
Haydn sounds familiar because he was so powerfully original that he redefined the Classical Era and everyone else copied HIM and built on forms that he defined and perfected. Only people who have not actually listened to much Haydn could be anything less than dazzled by his music and endless invention. He was revered by Mozart, Beethoven and became the beloved Papa Haydn to the 19th Century for great reasons. Do yourself a favor and get to know these works. Mr. Schiff is a great artist to learn them through.