Berliner Philharmoniker, András Schiff

Berliner Philharmoniker 
András Schiff  Conductor and Piano

Johann Sebastian Bach
Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor BWV 1052 
Joseph Haydn
Symphony No. 100 in G major »Military« 
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Don Giovanni Overture 
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor K.466 

Introductory presentation always one hour before concert

András Schiff is a pianist with a clearly circumscribed repertoire. Liszt, Rachmaninov, Ravel – he never plays a single note by any of them. By his own admission, he is only interested in composers whom he recognizes as having a connection to music by Bach – such as Mozart and Haydn, both of whom feature in this programme for Schiff’s current guest appearance with the Berliner Philharmoniker. And for this concert Bach himself, of course, could not be omitted. Here Schiff appears on the platform as both pianist and conductor – just as Baroque and Classical composers of the day once directed their concertos from the keyboard.

The evening opens with Bach’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, a work which hasn’t been performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker for over half a century – or, to be more precise, not since the legendary performance with Glenn Gould and Herbert von Karajan in 1958. Schiff meaningfully couples this work of Bach’s with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20, which is also in D minor and already foreshadows with its sombre emotion the Romantic piano concertos of the 19th century.

A not dissimilar world of expression is evoked in the demonic Don Giovanni overture as well as in Haydn’s “Military” Symphony, in which latter work the composer succeeds in making tangible the depths and horrors of war – powerful evidence to refute Haydn’s widely assumed blandness.