Love listening to Schiff. Thank you very much for this upload. Imperfect, but he warned us, and it still is utterly moving and wonderful to hear. Thank you! ❤
@Fritz_Maisenbacher Maybe you don't, but many do. You probably just need to clean your ears and stop poisoning yourself with Glenn Goulds butchering of the piano.
You answer the wrong person. I am not at all a fan of Gould, only for a few works. And certainly not the late Beethoven. But on this matter I share with Gould the same idol : Artur Schnabel. @@gicko2338
This is a great performance, one of the ones with the deepest understanding, I can assure you. Thanks for the upload! This is a live performance, and Schiff has the ability of _not hitting_ a key when it would be a mistake. He just omits it, and yes, I can also hear them. I am sure that these are not "simplifications" but accidental mistakes, and his mistakes are like this (a good gift). BUT! He is far deeper in understanding of anything he plays than most other pianists, and his performance is not only meaningful, but this meaning is "appropriate". The important thing is the single major cause why the composer composed a piece. When Schiff plays, the _important_ thing _is_ there. Here it is not mere virtuosity but meaning. The meaning and the essence should not be sold for cheap anyways. We heard him in a concert, after two WTC pieces he played Beethoven's Op 109, 110, 111. Then he played the whole "Tempest" Sonata as the encore. I was there with my good friend who is a professor at the musical academy in Budapest; and we agreed that for the encore, Schiff would be able to play any Beethoven Sonata from heart with the same depth of understanding. This is him, he does not only have his repertoire in his "wallet", but a huge musical warehouse is in his head and hands, ready to be performed anytime; and you can experience this in every notes he plays. His lecture on the Hammerklavier worths your listening if you are interested. This is very much detailed - and you'll understand what he does here. ruclips.net/video/UD8Isld41k8/видео.html
Fugues were ALWAYS his specialty and here, we have him serving it out in the only way Beethoven must have heard it in his mind while composing those notes! I’m now curiously ready for an AI version of this fugue
In his introductory comments before this performance, Maestro Schiff said that when he was a young man, he could play most of the notes in the sonata, but he had no idea what was going on. Today, he said, is just the opposite! I'll take him at his word - his playing always sounds wonderful to me.
34:50 E stato scritto in merito alla sonata 106. Quanto di più grande sia stato concepito da mente umana. Beethoven tu sia giunca il mio abbraccio da cuore a cuore, con un immenso grazie, tu sai il perché.
Thank you for posting. Enjoyed enormously! Interesting to read comments too. Just yesterday I was listening to this sonata for the first time played by Yuja Wang. In general I really like her as a pianist but this one I really didn’t understand in her performance, not not liked but really didn’t understand (someone in the comments felt totally the opposite). As an amateur I enjoyed performance of Andras Schiff so much more (despite all presumable faults). At the end i think it really is down to personal preferences.
You are very welcome 🙏🏻 and you are absolutely right! What I really appreciate in Schiff’s interpretation is the honesty and the sense of proportions that he brings to music! Anyway I must also say that I admire the full commitment in Wang’s playing (…and of course her breath-taking technique!)
:Load of discordant noise. Yet I really enjoy this piece (which is well played) as it is quite simply Beethoven. It is as if I can connect with his mind.
In his lecture on the op.106,(available on RUclips-recorded in 2006) A. Schiff was of the opinion that, in the first movement, the pianists should follow Beethoven's metronome mark of minim= 138, especially since it is the only metronome mark that is due to Beethoven himself, and that , contrary to common belief, Beethoven's metronome was not "wrong", that he had examined it himself etc. So what happened since? With minim=138, the first movement's duration should be less than 8 minutes! This is of course impossible, as the fastest 1st movement so far is 8 mn 50 by Schnabel (minim=120)and we feel it's not right. I believe a reasonable tempo should be close to 10mn or thereabout(See, e.g. Levit, P. Serkin, M. Perahia ...)
If I recall correctly, in that particular lecture (or in a public conversation with IPO, also available on YT), M. Schiff said that probably the metronome mark was referring to the initial “Motto” (bars 1-4). After that, I agree with you, the piece is to be played most certainly with a flowing tempo, but still humanly playable.
How do you calculate "less than 8 minutes"? Counting the bars, simple multiplication and division? That is not how it works. A pianist is not a mechanical device, he or she is a musician.
The problem is that András here is playing a tempo that is clearly much too fast for his abilities, and he is forced to slow down all the time. And clearly that envisioned tempo can't be true because we don't have any evidence that it was ever performed. Even though Beethoven and Czerny were adamant that the pieces had to be performed at the *exact* tempo prescribed. So András Schiff playing at a significantly slower speed than what he thinks (and with lots of compromised) is not a solution. The only possible conclusion really is a different interpretation of the metronome mark. Glenn Gould demonstrates that a slower speed allows for a far clearer execution of the speed while still being impressively fast (but even Glenn Gould is forced into some compromises with his slower tempo).
@@musikalischesopferAndrás Schiff plays the very first note as a quarter instead of an eighth note. His tempo is even impossible to play cleanly in the first four bars.
@@Farahmand1010, I mean that all the arduous parts around the sonata are simplified. I had faith and clicked on this video, but as soon as I saw the right hand at 0:20, I just gave up. 2:26 sounds just silly, the big chords at the beginning sound empty… I don’t know what Andras is thinking, I don’t care at all, he is just not doing justice to this sonata, which should have been feared by pianists after more than 200 years after its completion.
In his defence he is in his late 60s and he doesn't have a large reach, but even in his youth he has simplified parts of music to make them more accessible I guess, notably Chopin's last prelude. Still an absolutely phenomenal pianist and teacher in my opinion, I really don't care if his technique isn't the greatest of all time.
@@chester6343, Pollini, at 80, recorded the Hammerklavier. Not a simplification to be seen. Schiff is a great musician, but I think he would be an even greater one if he made more mistakes.
Every great pianist has had detractors. Serkin had a "harsh tone". Schnabel was too "intellectual", even boring. Cortot's technique was terrible. Pollini was insufficiently "expressive". Horowitz was a "show off". But Schiff is accused of being a cheat. That's new territory. And even for being too clear and accurate. What's next? Otto Klemperer was always faking his physical disabilities?!!
Cortot had such good technique that Horowitz went to study with him. In fact he wanted to learn a certain technical trick. Cortot knew about this and never taught Horowitz what he wanted.
It's new territory because other people don't do it. I don't have a problem with leaving out a note here and there if It's barely audible so removing it doesn't sacrifice the musical quality and if it's just to make a passage more fluid and accurate sounding. But what Schiff did at the beginning of this was egregious.
I bought premium and all advertisements gone. You people should understand that nothing of quality is free, subscribe and you will be happy, it's not expensive.
No, it appears it’s something Beethoven used to do very frequently, every bar would have a different tempo when he played, it’s something Schiff started to do in the last couple of years probably to match Beethoven.I heard his last Waldstein and he did the same.Annoying or not, maybe it’s just what Beethoven wanted…?
@@fenyx044 Or he is just faithfully following the Schnabel tempo markings?! I know of this claim about performance practices of Beethoven. I'm not going back to listen again, so that's all I have to say .
Schiff’s tendency to fudge difficult chords by omitting inner voice notes is getting worse and worse these days. From the very beginning, I can point out so many fudges, starting from 0:19. Overall very poor sonority😢 He even intentionally omits the bass for the sake of an easier leap in the left hand. 0:48, 3:30. I am willing to hear a bunch of wrong notes rather than these simplifications.
Totally wrong, all what counts is the inner ecstasy one feels when listening to music. And there is no authentic way how to play. The so called composers have anyhow copied all what they heard when entering the hidden world of music once created by our Mahashakti with their intuition key once given to them before their birth. And these great copy personalities have made themselves here and there mistakes they would correct today. Andras Schiff enters into the music as the copy personalities and let’s us feel the joy which the music was meant for. I am very happy to listen to the excellent performance of Andras Schiff, specially on his superior Bösendorfer grand piano.
Mmmm, Fudge (Homer voice) Just listened Yuga Wang play it after Schiff. She destroys him. Schiff is getting older but I've always felt there was something too delicate about his touch. His playing doesn't move me that much. Schnabel is probably my favorite Beethoven performer. I heard Murray Perihia play it live and it was epic!
@@lvb1770 Yuja's definitely more of a super-virtuosic player than Schiff, but the two have performed together before, and I doubt she'd appreciate you pitting them against each other. They're both wonderful pianists and I appreciate both of their performances of this sonata for different reasons.
@( . o . ) Oh crikey. You obviously were not at the concert. Schiff said, “When I was young I could play all the notes, but I didn’t understand the sonata at all. Nowadays it’s exactly the opposite.” He added, “But what must we do? Give up? I play it because it is one of the greatest marks of western civilisation.” So he apologised to his audience because he knew he could not play all the notes anymore. But the spirit of Beethoven is here in this performance, and his love and respect for the music. And his very, very deep knowledge. He knows his limitations, and is a humble person. His entire life is music. It is what he has lived for and is living for. Give him a break, please, you young experts. I hope that when you are his age you will be as filled with musical and life wisdom as Schiff is, and that you will be able to acknowledge your limitations as cleanly as he does. He is one utterly courageous man.
@@lvb1770 : Murray Perahia is his name. Yuja is a fine pianist, but I have also heard her play thirds when she should be playing successive octaves; every pianist worth their salt knows, when they play, exactly what they are capable of during any given performance, and they act accordingly. Yuja, however, is far from mature enough to understand the Hammerklavier as deeply as András Schiff does. And this shows in her renderings.
I think, just my opinion, that Andras is an overrated pianist. Everything is fine, bureaucratic and well-behaved. But it's a pity that a "A. Schnabel" is no longer relevant here. Ah, how boring the "ship".
Schnabel was a brilliant pianist no doubt, and some of his interpretations are my favorites, but his only recording of op.106 is a mess, his outer movements are chaotic, accurate mostly but out of control
33:28 this is ridiculous. Is he playing a Chopin waltz ? What is this for a non-funny joke ? Schiff, if you are not able to, play everything else, but do not shit on this holy score.
Love listening to Schiff. Thank you very much for this upload. Imperfect, but he warned us, and it still is utterly moving and wonderful to hear. Thank you! ❤
Inhaltlich die verständlichste Fuge - grandiose Leistung!
When the Hammer Klavier Sonata ends you know you listened to something extraordinary.
Absolutely! I particularly enjoyed the few moments of religious silence and recollection, before the well deserved standing ovation 👏🏻
Not with Schiff.
@Fritz_Maisenbacher
Maybe you don't, but many do. You probably just need to clean your ears and stop poisoning yourself with Glenn Goulds butchering of the piano.
You answer the wrong person.
I am not at all a fan of Gould, only for a few works.
And certainly not the late Beethoven.
But on this matter I share with Gould the same idol : Artur Schnabel.
@@gicko2338
You're right - extraordinarily "complicated but outstanding" fugue by Beethoven.
He's an amazing pianist. Always a joy to listen to his interpretation of piano sonatas from this period!
Extremely profound and touching interpretation of part 3 of the sonata...
Timing please
Minute 14:25
This is a great performance, one of the ones with the deepest understanding, I can assure you. Thanks for the upload!
This is a live performance, and Schiff has the ability of _not hitting_ a key when it would be a mistake. He just omits it, and yes, I can also hear them. I am sure that these are not "simplifications" but accidental mistakes, and his mistakes are like this (a good gift).
BUT! He is far deeper in understanding of anything he plays than most other pianists, and his performance is not only meaningful, but this meaning is "appropriate". The important thing is the single major cause why the composer composed a piece. When Schiff plays, the _important_ thing _is_ there. Here it is not mere virtuosity but meaning. The meaning and the essence should not be sold for cheap anyways.
We heard him in a concert, after two WTC pieces he played Beethoven's Op 109, 110, 111. Then he played the whole "Tempest" Sonata as the encore. I was there with my good friend who is a professor at the musical academy in Budapest; and we agreed that for the encore, Schiff would be able to play any Beethoven Sonata from heart with the same depth of understanding. This is him, he does not only have his repertoire in his "wallet", but a huge musical warehouse is in his head and hands, ready to be performed anytime; and you can experience this in every notes he plays.
His lecture on the Hammerklavier worths your listening if you are interested. This is very much detailed - and you'll understand what he does here.
ruclips.net/video/UD8Isld41k8/видео.html
Música muy difícil del repertorio pianístico y muy bien defendida por el maestro.❤
5:41 fugue!
One of the most wonderful Fugati🎶
Fugues were ALWAYS his specialty and here, we have him serving it out in the only way Beethoven must have heard it in his mind while composing those notes! I’m now curiously ready for an AI version of this fugue
❤к
NO! Please, NO. Do it after I'm dead, which shouldn't be long now. I'm 82; give me a break.
Indeed - an extraordinary, wonderful interpretation !!
In his introductory comments before this performance, Maestro Schiff said that when he was a young man, he could play most of the notes in the sonata, but he had no idea what was going on. Today, he said, is just the opposite! I'll take him at his word - his playing always sounds wonderful to me.
Yes, I recall that! He always has a wonderful sense of humour🎶
Unglaublich ! Bravo !!
34:50 E stato scritto in merito alla sonata 106. Quanto di più grande sia stato concepito da mente umana. Beethoven tu sia giunca il mio abbraccio da cuore a cuore, con un immenso grazie, tu sai il perché.
autore ed interprete di lusso - complimenti
My favorite!!!
Arguably his piano Opus Magnum, certainly has a primacy in length!🎶
Splendid !
THE pianist for Beethoven
Thank you for posting. Enjoyed enormously! Interesting to read comments too. Just yesterday I was listening to this sonata for the first time played by Yuja Wang. In general I really like her as a pianist but this one I really didn’t understand in her performance, not not liked but really didn’t understand (someone in the comments felt totally the opposite). As an amateur I enjoyed performance of Andras Schiff so much more (despite all presumable faults). At the end i think it really is down to personal preferences.
You are very welcome 🙏🏻 and you are absolutely right! What I really appreciate in Schiff’s interpretation is the honesty and the sense of proportions that he brings to music!
Anyway I must also say that I admire the full commitment in Wang’s playing (…and of course her breath-taking technique!)
Magnificent !
la musique classique détend l'essprit
Il fait voyager votre esprit🎶
"Кто ясно мыслит , тот ясно излагает"
This Music's for thought ....But not enough listeners, yet , I hope so! BRAVO A.Shiff !
Thank you for your comment is very short and extremely beautiful and precise
Wonderful playing. I may say Schiff is even better at Schubert! But this is pretty special.
21:20 Brahms IV
La quarta di Brahms è un meraviglioso insieme di citazioni a Bach ma soprattutto a Beethoven!🎶
Perhaps Schiff should quit his career as pianist to take some lessons with the RUclips experts in all these comments 😂
@@filipecameradebona8388 I think he should switch to a Pleyel
😅 if you are serious (I think you are not) then I disagree. 😊 Schiff loves this music, and we hear his love and honesty of feeling in every note.
:Load of discordant noise. Yet I really enjoy this piece (which is well played) as it is quite simply Beethoven. It is as if I can connect with his mind.
baren boim still i the lead
In his lecture on the op.106,(available on RUclips-recorded in 2006) A. Schiff was of the opinion that, in the first movement, the pianists should follow Beethoven's metronome mark of minim= 138, especially since it is the only metronome mark that is due to Beethoven himself, and that , contrary to common belief, Beethoven's metronome was not "wrong", that he had examined it himself etc. So what happened since? With minim=138, the first movement's duration should be less than 8 minutes! This is of course impossible, as the fastest 1st movement so far is 8 mn 50 by Schnabel (minim=120)and we feel it's not right. I believe a reasonable tempo should be close to 10mn or thereabout(See, e.g. Levit, P. Serkin, M. Perahia ...)
If I recall correctly, in that particular lecture (or in a public conversation with IPO, also available on YT), M. Schiff said that probably the metronome mark was referring to the initial “Motto” (bars 1-4). After that, I agree with you, the piece is to be played most certainly with a flowing tempo, but still humanly playable.
How do you calculate "less than 8 minutes"? Counting the bars, simple multiplication and division? That is not how it works. A pianist is not a mechanical device, he or she is a musician.
The problem is that András here is playing a tempo that is clearly much too fast for his abilities, and he is forced to slow down all the time. And clearly that envisioned tempo can't be true because we don't have any evidence that it was ever performed. Even though Beethoven and Czerny were adamant that the pieces had to be performed at the *exact* tempo prescribed. So András Schiff playing at a significantly slower speed than what he thinks (and with lots of compromised) is not a solution. The only possible conclusion really is a different interpretation of the metronome mark. Glenn Gould demonstrates that a slower speed allows for a far clearer execution of the speed while still being impressively fast (but even Glenn Gould is forced into some compromises with his slower tempo).
@@musikalischesopferAndrás Schiff plays the very first note as a quarter instead of an eighth note. His tempo is even impossible to play cleanly in the first four bars.
5:42
14:25
18:30
Nice simplifications, Andras…
Hello, can I ask you what do you mean by there? Thank you
@@Farahmand1010, I mean that all the arduous parts around the sonata are simplified. I had faith and clicked on this video, but as soon as I saw the right hand at 0:20, I just gave up. 2:26 sounds just silly, the big chords at the beginning sound empty… I don’t know what Andras is thinking, I don’t care at all, he is just not doing justice to this sonata, which should have been feared by pianists after more than 200 years after its completion.
In his defence he is in his late 60s and he doesn't have a large reach, but even in his youth he has simplified parts of music to make them more accessible I guess, notably Chopin's last prelude. Still an absolutely phenomenal pianist and teacher in my opinion, I really don't care if his technique isn't the greatest of all time.
@@chester6343, Pollini, at 80, recorded the Hammerklavier. Not a simplification to be seen. Schiff is a great musician, but I think he would be an even greater one if he made more mistakes.
@@MaScalo4508 recorded
Every great pianist has had detractors. Serkin had a "harsh tone". Schnabel was too "intellectual", even boring. Cortot's technique was terrible. Pollini was insufficiently "expressive". Horowitz was a "show off". But Schiff is accused of being a cheat. That's new territory. And even for being too clear and accurate. What's next? Otto Klemperer was always faking his physical disabilities?!!
Cortot had such good technique that Horowitz went to study with him. In fact he wanted to learn a certain technical trick. Cortot knew about this and never taught Horowitz what he wanted.
One of the greatest pianists and one of the greatest Hammerklaviers I have ever heard.
It's new territory because other people don't do it. I don't have a problem with leaving out a note here and there if It's barely audible so removing it doesn't sacrifice the musical quality and if it's just to make a passage more fluid and accurate sounding. But what Schiff did at the beginning of this was egregious.
Beautiful 3rd movement, 4th movement sounded like he was straining himself -- perhaps time to retire this one from his repertoire
a real travesty to have this video cluttered with shameless, useless advertisements. an actual blasphemy
I do agree! Unfortunately I can’t remove them since I don’t own the copyright of the video🙏🏻
I bought premium and all advertisements gone. You people should understand that nothing of quality is free, subscribe and you will be happy, it's not expensive.
Schiff varies the tempo a lot in the fugue. It's not rubato-- it's just annoying.
No, it appears it’s something Beethoven used to do very frequently, every bar would have a different tempo when he played, it’s something Schiff started to do in the last couple of years probably to match Beethoven.I heard his last Waldstein and he did the same.Annoying or not, maybe it’s just what Beethoven wanted…?
@@fenyx044 Or he is just faithfully following the Schnabel tempo markings?! I know of this claim about performance practices of Beethoven. I'm not going back to listen again, so that's all I have to say .
@marksmith3947 yep i know. Honestly I don’t like it that much either
Schiff’s tendency to fudge difficult chords by omitting inner voice notes is getting worse and worse these days. From the very beginning, I can point out so many fudges, starting from 0:19. Overall very poor sonority😢
He even intentionally omits the bass for the sake of an easier leap in the left hand. 0:48, 3:30. I am willing to hear a bunch of wrong notes rather than these simplifications.
Totally wrong, all what counts is the inner ecstasy one feels when listening to music. And there is no authentic way how to play. The so called composers have anyhow copied all what they heard when entering the hidden world of music once created by our Mahashakti with their intuition key once given to them before their birth. And these great copy personalities have made themselves here and there mistakes they would correct today. Andras Schiff enters into the music as the copy personalities and let’s us feel the joy which the music was meant for. I am very happy to listen to the excellent performance of Andras Schiff, specially on his superior Bösendorfer grand piano.
Mmmm, Fudge (Homer voice) Just listened Yuga Wang play it after Schiff. She destroys him. Schiff is getting older but I've always felt there was something too delicate about his touch. His playing doesn't move me that much. Schnabel is probably my favorite Beethoven performer. I heard Murray Perihia play it live and it was epic!
@@lvb1770 Yuja's definitely more of a super-virtuosic player than Schiff, but the two have performed together before, and I doubt she'd appreciate you pitting them against each other. They're both wonderful pianists and I appreciate both of their performances of this sonata for different reasons.
@( . o . ) Oh crikey. You obviously were not at the concert. Schiff said, “When I was young I could play all the notes, but I didn’t understand the sonata at all. Nowadays it’s exactly the opposite.” He added, “But what must we do? Give up? I play it because it is one of the greatest marks of western civilisation.” So he apologised to his audience because he knew he could not play all the notes anymore. But the spirit of Beethoven is here in this performance, and his love and respect for the music. And his very, very deep knowledge. He knows his limitations, and is a humble person. His entire life is music. It is what he has lived for and is living for. Give him a break, please, you young experts. I hope that when you are his age you will be as filled with musical and life wisdom as Schiff is, and that you will be able to acknowledge your limitations as cleanly as he does. He is one utterly courageous man.
@@lvb1770 : Murray Perahia is his name. Yuja is a fine pianist, but I have also heard her play thirds when she should be playing successive octaves; every pianist worth their salt knows, when they play, exactly what they are capable of during any given performance, and they act accordingly. Yuja, however, is far from mature enough to understand the Hammerklavier as deeply as András Schiff does. And this shows in her renderings.
I think, just my opinion, that Andras is an overrated pianist. Everything is fine, bureaucratic and well-behaved. But it's a pity that a "A. Schnabel" is no longer relevant here. Ah, how boring the "ship".
Schnabel was a brilliant pianist no doubt, and some of his interpretations are my favorites, but his only recording of op.106 is a mess, his outer movements are chaotic, accurate mostly but out of control
I just listened yo Ashkenazy recording live 1980. Much better. Ashkenazy underrated, Schiff overrated.
Sorry, many good things but I dislike.
33:28 this is ridiculous. Is he playing a Chopin waltz ? What is this for a non-funny joke ?
Schiff, if you are not able to, play everything else, but do not shit on this holy score.