The appearance of another volume of Schubert's piano music from Andras Schiff always lifts the spirits, and this time quite a bit higher than any comparable available versions. Typically, he chooses his favourite Bosendorfer Imperial with its Viennese accent and, as he writes in an introduction to the notes, its Schubertian sensitivity to tone-quality, particularly in the softest dynamics.
Schiff cites the opening of the G major Sonata, D894 as an example and, indeed, this movement, which the composer originally called a Fantasy, has a gentle luminosity about it, an intimacy lacking in the more statuesque, contrivedly muscular playing of Brendel. Schiff's approach to the vast first movement more closely resembles Lupu's in its meditative, long-sighted qualities; but Schiff again triumphs, in coaxing both a wider and a more finely controlled tone palette out of his instrument.
Schiff's greatest achievement here, though, is his organic view of the inner and outer worlds of this sonata. As in the song, ''Der Lindenbaum'' (from Winterreise), images of both tender dream and harsh reality seem to shape the piece. Where Brendel offers stark contrasts, with the turbulent, minor-key music often played heavily and with teeth-gritted determination, Schiff makes them seem simply different sides of the same persona. One flows into and out of another, with the dark concentration of rhythm in the eye of the storm never compromising the original impulse of the music.
In the last movement, Schiff outdoes both Brendel and Lupu in the dance of constantly shifting weights and measures, lights and half-lights which dapple the rondo's returns. Where many pianists offer an adult view of child's play, Schiff seems to play through the childlike ears and eyes of Schubert himself.
This outstanding performance of D894 is nicely balanced by a deliciously understated D557, the most classically conceived of all Schubert's sonatas, and by the more adventurous D575. Here, Schiff continues to exploit the qualifying ma non troppo of the opening Allegro to create a sense of a plethora of ideas and energies being held back within an unquiet serenity. If the slow movement is a little over-deliberate, the finale again seems to be constantly surprising itself with the new ideas which sing out as if they had only just been imagined.'