Jonathan Biss Recommends...
"Playing Beethoven compels you to make yourself a better musician, a better person. I have tried; I shall keep trying."
Jonathan Biss
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The Holy Grail.
Like so many pianists, I would have to say that no other music plays so profound a role in my life. No composer commands our attention more completely, and each of the 32 piano sonatas is a unique masterwork.
This set is distinguished by so many qualities, but above all, it's Schnabel's way of bringing to the fore the spiritual side of this music that I find astonishing. Having just recorded four of the sonatas, the feat of playing all 32 with such an absolute sense of identification seems more extraordinary than ever to me.
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As much as I adore Winterreise, this cycle has always been closest to my heart. The emotional trajectory experienced by the miller is so precisely and overpoweringly expressed by Schubert, it's as if the listener experiences it with him. This performance captures every affect with extraordinary vividness.
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There's no piece of music I find more uplifting than Mozart's c minor Mass - it is filled with purity and with humanity in equal measure. The first live performance I heard of the work was conducted by Louis Langree, and it made an enormous impression on me.
This recording - in which the unfinished mass is highly sensitively completed by Langree himself - possesses many of the same qualities that made that performance so memorable - a combination of reverence for the music and real liveliness. And of course, fantastic singing, making this a truly beautiful performance.
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The piano repertoire is pretty phenomenal, but boy, do I envy string players for the Beethoven quartets.
In the last five, in particular, Beethoven journeys into another realm - one even farther from earth than the one he visits in the late piano sonatas. All of these performances (some of which also feature the great Rudolf Serkin) are wonderful, but none more so than the late Beethovens, in which the playing has equal parts wisdom and heart.
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Everything that Lipatti touched was simply gold - I can think of no other pianist who managed to communicate the essence of the music he played so directly and purely.
There are certain things in this recording - the Bach Choral Preludes, for example, or the slow movement of the Mozart - that I have listened to literally hundreds of times, and I love them as much today as I did on first hearing.
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There's probably no music I love more than Mozart's operas, and if it's possible to have a favorite among them, Cosi Fan Tutte is my favorite.
This performance captures those qualities which make this music so special - particularly the way in which tragedy and comedy are never far apart - and the trio, "Soave il vento," from the first act, is simply as moving as music can be.
