Listening to classical music can occasionally give you the kind of blow on the head that the hero of Mark Twain’s novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court receives: all of a sudden you’re in a different time and place. Thanks to our very own HIPsters, it’s possible to hear music just—or almost—as it sounded centuries ago. Say a 1828 Schubertiade in the Vienna salon of the Schober family; we time-travel to such an event and the aura of its music comes back to the future with us. Sometimes, we get stuck in a loop, caught in a place we’d rather be.
As a musical time traveler, pianist András Schiff feels so comfortable in Habsburg-Empire Vienna that the present frequently disgusts him. He rails against the “sonic monoculture” of the Steinway piano or the “Eurotrash” of avant-garde opera productions. He takes the interpretation of his core repertoire—Bach, the First Viennese School, Schubert, Brahms—so seriously that he responds to youthful arrogance as if it was a personal insult. Two years ago, I watched him give a masterclass at the Verbier Festival and tear apart a young Russian pianist, whose Bach Prelude was sloppy, with too much pedal: “You have no idea what you’re doing.”
Then again, you might call Schiff’s timeless crankiness modern. He was always more interested in widening his artistic horizons than in diving into pianistic minutiae. He never believed in the separation between art and politics, nor in stardom and the acrobatic virtuosity that fuels it. He introduces his recitals himself, putting the programs together the evening of the performance, depending on where he is and what he feels like playing. He was an early explorer of the diverse breed that makes up historical keyboard instruments—his latest Bach album was recorded on the clavichord.
I met Schiff one morning following a chamber music concert at the Salzburg Festival in the lounge of his hotel. The bar was still closed and an electrician was repairing the sound system, turning a chanson playlist up and down occasionally. Schiff’s presence is similar to his playing. He speaks softly, gently, and with an elegant thoroughness that forces you to listen. At the same time, his sentences are full of dry humor and cutting observations.
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