SCHUBERT'S PIANO SONATAS WITH PAUL LEWIS / Review

SCHUBERT'S PIANO SONATAS

WITH PAUL LEWIS

Victoria Concert Hall

Saturday (18 February 2023)

 

This review was first published in Bachtrack on 20 February 2023 with the title "Paul Lewis’ Schubert scores a big hit in Singapore".

 

Spare a thought for poor Franz Schubert (1797-1828), who died from syphilis at the age of 31 and never got to enjoy the fruits of his labour. Many of his late (and great) works were published and premiered posthumously. How flattered he would be to learn his piano sonatas were being appreciated almost two hundred years later in a concert hall halfway around the world, in Singapore. The performer was British pianist Paul Lewis, one of Schubert’s most compelling  modern interpreters.   

 

Like the “Unfinished” Eighth Symphony, Schubert’s Sonata in C major (D.840) exists as only two completed movements. Carrying the nickname Reliquie (or Relic), it opens with plain-speaking earnestness, surprisingly subdued given its “cheerful” key. Lewis laid into pages with serious intent, quickly building into a mini-climax, later contrasted by a second subject B minor which sounded unusually optimistic. It is this paradoxical mix of emotions, enhanced by well-placed dissonances, that makes Schubert endlessly fascinating.

 

The Andante second movement in C minor glimpsed into the world of Schubert’s lieder, particularly its darker and more melancholic pages. Lewis infused these substantial movements – vulnerability, tenderness and all - with an ardent advocacy that that was totally absorbing. For most listeners, these two movements would be enough exposition (as in the symphony), but one wonders what might have been.

 

By contrast, Schubert’s “little” Sonata A major (D.664 / Op.120), one of his most popular, gifted some twenty minutes of his sunniest music. Unremittingly tuneful, a song-like thread through its three movements was most gratefully delivered. Even the mere hint of dark clouds in the central movement was quickly dispelled with a broadening of its glorious melody. The finale – a rondo all but in name – continued the penchant with melody but the stakes were now upped on the technical front. With the quickening of pace and of expansion of volume, there was to be no hardening of tone or nuance, just a celebration of its jocular humour and country dance steps.      

 

Contemporaneous with the earlier D.840, the “big” Sonata in A minor (D.845, both were written in 1825) in four complete movements displayed what happens when Schubert really got stuck in with his jobs at hand. Lewis’ view was to regard it as one comparable in stature with the great final trilogy (D.958-960). No punches were pulled, and little to nothing was spared in displaying anger and angst within its fraught pages. Bringing into a boil early in the game, the music’s alternating between light and shade offered further insights into the composer’s state of mind. The plot thickened in the second movement’s elaborate theme and variations, with no resolution in sight.

 

The short scherzo contrasted skittish dance rhythms with the calm and placidity of its trio, and Lewis went headlong attacca into the finale with its unease and agitation turning into full-blown strife and  turmoil. Here was Schubert at his most uncompromising and direct, and Lewis’ gloves-off and furiously punched-out chords revealed an unvarnished passion and Beethovenian defiance. Garnering a spontaneous standing ovation, his sole encore displayed a more congenial side to the great Austrian - the sixth of his Moments Musicaux (D.780) in A flat major. Needless to say, it was totally sublime. 

Star Rating: *****

Photographs by Yong Junyi / Singapore Symphony Orchestra