Great Performers

Artist

Sir András Schiff, piano

Programme

Bach, a Beethoven Mirror

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)

Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903 (1717-1723. Publ. 1802)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 –1827)

Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31 No. 2, “The Tempest” (1801-1802)

Johann Sebastian Bach

Ricercar a 3, from Musical Offering, BWV 1079 (1747)

Ludwig van Beethoven

Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111 (1820-1822)

Concert with no interval

Two Experimentation Geniuses

Two of the magical ‘Bs’ of Western music come together in this programme offered by András Schiff, a Festival debutant who has always moved comfortably between these two worlds, Bach’s and Beethoven’s. As a great father of all music, the keyboard was for Bach not only a way of transcending his own language, of deep contrapuntal core, but of experimenting with it. This experimental character is essential in Beethoven, who in his 32 sonatas (unsurpassed corpus of the genre) projects all the inheritance received from his classical masters. The last of these sonatas was not even fully understood by the romantics, who followed him with a mixture of absorbing reverence and fascination. That final Arietta with his variations is throwing his darts into a future that still might be ours.