Uchida casts a spell with First and Second Viennese masters
To attend a Mitsuko Uchida recital is to be transported to another world, where events mean more than they do in daily life.
Piano lovers know Beethoven’s Sonata in E minor, Op. 90, if they know it at all, as a modest, in-between piece, not exactly representative of either the composer’s heroic middle period or his visionary late period. And they acknowledge Schubert’s vast Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960, to be one of the greatest of all piano sonatas.
It took programming the two pieces together, as Uchida did Wednesday in Carnegie Hall, in the atmosphere of deep concentration that is her hallmark, to make a listener realize that not only do the two pieces have very similar main themes, but one can sound very much like the fulfillment of the other.
Between the sonatas, sensitive performances of Schoenberg’s Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11, and Georgy Kurtág’s tiny but evocative Márta ligaturája invited further reflection on how musical meanings build on each other.
From the first bars of the Beethoven, Uchida made clear she would slow down and contemplate musical details at will, while never losing sight of the overall arc of the movement. And when forward momentum was needed, as in the development section with its ideas tumbling out one after the other, she supplied it.
In this concise two-movement sonata, an opening movement full of questions relaxed into a rondo finale, whose songful theme and leisurely pace inevitably draw the label “Schubertian.” While pausing less and going with the flow more, Uchida leavened this smooth music with a wonderful variety of touches and voicings, cantabile to start with, then drooping gently over a ripple of triplets and chiming in high chords amid tinkling bells.
Considering the flow of this program, and the spell it cast over listeners, one imagined the artist would have preferred to proceed directly to the Schoenberg pieces after the quiet finish of the Beethoven, instead of having to bounce up off the bench to bow. (In fact, she had a “please refrain from applauding” note printed in the program after the Kurtág piece.) But even with the interruption for applause—and for a late-arriving ticketholder who took seemingly forever to find his seat in one of the front rows–the kinship between the “dying fall” of Beethoven’s rondo and the descending theme woven through Schoenberg’s three pieces was plain to hear.
Two-dimensional and daunting on the printed page, Schoenberg’s atonal music developed depth and character through Uchida’s artful voicing of its singing theme and flickering fantasms. The second piece’s buildup of low sonorities à la Brahms recalled Schoenberg’s famous embrace of that composer’s music as a “progressive” precursor to modernism.
Drama that was only hinted at in the first two pieces burst out in clattering octaves and ringing chords in the third, alternating with ghostly pianissimo echoes. Furious flurries dwindled to a single note, pianissimo, to close the piece. One would gladly have heard the Kurtág at that moment, but an intermission intervened.
The pianist waited until every single returnee from intermission was firmly in their seat before coming onstage, and one could see why: Kurtág’s tender tribute to his late wife and concert partner was just a couple of minutes long, and sketched in shades of piano and pianissimo throughout. Uchida, the master of touch, emulated the gentle percussions of the cimbalom, the Hungarian dulcimer, for which the piece was originally written, as she commemorated the Kurtágs’ 73-year partnership in overlapping lines.
Forewarned not to applaud, the audience listened intently as Schubert’s B-flat major theme emerged from the atonal mist of Kurtág’s piece. The Viennese master’s length never sounded more heavenly as the sonata’s first movement unfolded to a duration greater than the three following movements combined. It seemed no detail was too small to slow down for and contemplate, and that ominous soft trill deep in the bass sounded more than ever like a memento mori. Uchida’s relaxed concentration wrapped all in a dreamlike atmosphere.
The dream continued in the Andante sostenuto, hushed yet inexorable in its long line. The dreamer seemed to wake up for a bright major-key interlude, only to return right away to the veiled meditation. The weightless Scherzo seemed to flutter down from the pianist’s fingers, sparkling like a brook in sunshine.
Another persistent enigmatic note—an octave this time, at mid-keyboard—heralded the rondo finale’s theme, a cousin to the first-movement theme (and so to Beethoven’s Op. 90) but more agitated and starting in the “wrong” key before finding its way home to B flat. The pianist committed completely to each of the rondo’s many moods, from anxious to serene to stormy, and, this being Schubert, was exquisitely sensitive to every color of major and minor. The piece seemed headed for another soft, open-ended conclusion, like all the other works on this program—until a final explosion of B-flat major exuberance put an exclamation point on the sonata and the whole evening.
Uchida returned to the stage twice, eyes shining and hand over heart, to acknowledge the ovation. Then the house lights went up, indicating that the experience was complete without encores, as indeed it was.
Carnegie Hall presents pianist Yefim Bronfman performing works by Mozart, Robert Schumann, Debussy and Tchaikovsky, 8 p.m. Wednesday. carnegiehall.org
One Response to “Uchida casts a spell with First and Second Viennese masters”
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Posted Apr 13, 2025 at 12:48 pm by Alex Apostolopoulos
I would just like to comment that there were a number of mistakes that were fairly obvious in the Schubert, especially in the first, third, and last movements. She even corrected herself once or twice — albeit in an elegant manner that most might overhear.
I heard her play the piece a few years ago in Carnegie Hall, and the performance was flawless. This is not to say that her interpretation was not beautiful and thoughtful; however, when a pianist makes at least ten mistakes (if not more, I did not count), that really distracts a listener who knows the piece well and appreciates its perfection.