Schiff vs. Grimaud

I had a friend in college whose father was a serious classical music buff. During a break one year, the friend was going to visit his family, and invited me along for a few days, so I got to see his father's CD collection. It was enormous, almost all of it classical, but what I found bewildering at the time was that he had more than one recording, sometimes many more, of almost any work in his collection. I was listening to a lot of jazz at the time – the music of almost infinite variety where improvisation is essential. No piece was ever played the same way twice, even by the same musicians. “What's the point,” I thought, “of having multiple recordings of the same symphony? Isn't the orchestra just playing what the composer had written? Aren't they all going to sound the same?” Needless to say, I couldn't have been more wrong. Interpretation, I would later learn, was the raison d'être of classical performance, and one of the reasons why the symphonies and sonatas that have been recorded thousands of times are still being recorded today (the other is the soloists' and conductors' outsize egos, but that's a topic for another day). This week, however, I had an opportunity to compare two interpretations of one of my favorite pieces – Beethoven's “Tempest” Sonata (No. 17, c-minor) – first-hand. I have owned for some time a disc with a performance by Hélène Grimaud, and have listened to it enough times to be more or less familiar with the music. A few weeks ago, however, the latest installment in Andras Schiff's complete cycle on ECM was released, and it contains his interpretation of the Tempest. The differences are apparent at first hearing, though it's a question of personal taste which one a given listener would prefer.

The Tempest is pretty unusual in structure – the first movement doesn't really have a development section, but contains two short recitatives instead. They are exquisitely beautiful and only distantly related to the main themes. The closing movement, on the other hand, is in a more traditional sonata form, with primary and secondary themes, recaps, and proper development in the middle. In his mostly illuminating liner notes, Schiff suggests that it is actually the last movement that carries the main weight of the sonata, not the first.

The most obvious difference is in the tempos. Schiff's are noticeably slower throughout. In the first movement the difference is not that great – Grimaud beats Schiff to the finish line by only 20 seconds, and five of those are the lead-in silence. More significant, however, are the dynamics. Schiff's are wider. His fortes are louder, his pianos softer. It's more than just volume, though – there is something about his touch that's more deliberate and forceful, especially in the left hand. He plays each chord like he really means it. What also comes through readily is his practice, supposedly once common but now antiquated, and one he had got some flak for in the past, of not striking the right and left hand notes at precisely the same moment even when they are so notated. All of these characteristics put together make for a very transparent, penetrating reading – you really hear everything, and understand better how the parts and themes relate to one another – but it also gives the music a slightly plodding and over-intellectualized quality. Grimaud, by contrast, comes off as more organic and concerned with the overall impression of the movement. Some details, while not completely glossed over, require some effort to catch. Where Grimaud shines, though, are those recitatives. Each is only a few notes long, but she makes them sound eerie, mysterious, other-worldly, almost cosmic. Schiff's over-articulated renditions sound pedestrian by comparison. I don't want to overstate the differences – neither reading is extreme, neither has any glaring deficiencies, and both are satisfying. But they are different enough that most listeners will eventually form a preference.

The slow movement is the least different of the bunch. Schiff's is slower. Not by a lot, but enough to make it a little too slow to my ears. This is good music to be sure, but I was getting a little bored towards the end.

It is in the finale where Schiff and Grimaud shoot off in opposite directions. Schiff makes a stink in the liner notes about how everyone plays the movement very fast. Well, that's what Grimaud does – her version is a full minute and a half shorter – but I think it works beautifully. She is a virtuosa to be sure, so the speed is no barrier to expression. What she ends up with is a concise organic whole, a performance that works as a total experience rather than a collection of notes. And although Schiff's unhurried stroll through the score is probably closer to Beethoven's indicated allegretto (Grimaud's is more of a presto), the speed actually enhances Beethoven's message, I think. It sounds more beautiful when played quickly precisely because the notes flow into one another and create a seamless melodic arc. The litmus test of both a work and a performance for me is that feeling in your chest, that imperceptible shiver of being slightly overwhelmed by emotion that goes through you when you hear a particularly deeply felt passage. Grimaud did that for me, especially with those descending triplets just before the development kicks in in earnest. So for me, as much as I've been enjoying Schiff's cycle so far, on the Tempest the nod goes to Grimaud, though I fully admit that it might have something to do with the fact that I've been listening to her version for a while, and maybe, in some small way, with the way she looks.