This week marks one of the great landmarks of Igor Levit’s career – the release of a complete cycle of all Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas. How did the 32-year-old choose to prepare? By playing in a village hall in the middle of the Austrian mountains.
The spruce-lined auditorium in Schwarzenberg (pop 1,790) in west Austria is fancier than most village halls, even if surrounded by nothing but fields and mountains. It also attracts musicians and music lovers from all over the world for the Schubertiade festival, who have been descending each year on this village since the festival’s formation in 1976.
So, no, this was no ordinary warm-up for the Beethoven box-set launch. Levit, one of today’s biggest piano stars, was accompanist to the Chinese violinist Ning Feng in an all-Schubert programme. They partnered each other beautifully in tone, general musicality and sense of phrase. Outside, the sun bathed the fields in a warm haze; inside, two friends were at ease with Schubert and each other, and they were clearly enjoying themselves. That’s part of the spirit of this festival.
Less relaxed was Feng playing of a solo violin arrangement of Erlkönig – demented, demotic and howling. Most pianists dread having to perform it, but Feng knocked it off as if it was a technical study. (His Stradivarius may need a rest, though.)
The previous evening, Levit was the solo pianist in Rossini’s odd, charming, sometimes frustrating Petite Messe Solennelle. The contrasting textures between piano and harmonium are always intriguing, but the most memorable moments were poignant singing by Slovakian soprano Simona Šaturová.
One of the tests of a good performance is whether the players can persuade an audience to hear familiar music with new ears. The Schumann Quartet – three brothers Schumann and the Estonian violist Liisa Randalu – managed it with a subtle and beautifully inflected performance of Schubert’s String Quartet in G, D 887.
Alfred Brendel’s young protege Kit Armstrong joined them for César Franck’s piano quintet. In the middle of so much classicism, this was a bitter, shocking twist. No wonder so many in the audience for its 1879 premiere had found it morally troubling, with its pulsating, voluptuous cycles of charge and release.
Austria’s Martin Mitterrutzner and German pianist Gerold Huber performed Die Schöne Müllerin. Huber was an exemplary accompanist. Mitterrutzner is a full-blown operatic tenor, which is not to all tastes in this kind of lieder. But the second half of the cycle is so full of passion and anguish that reservations melted away.
Finally, Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi performed a programme of impromptus and a late Schubert sonata. His sibilant pianissimo stays in the memory, even if he played the first movement of the D major sonata, D 850 as if worrying about missing a bus.
Festival director Gerd Nachbauer has overseen the musical and artist programme for more than 40 years. The format is so successful, it is little wonder that not much changes from year to year. He may shudder at the thought of including Birtwistle or Boulez, but he has an ear for outstanding emerging talent and for luring the best performers in the world back to this little village hall year after year.
• Schubertiade festival runs until 9 October.
