A busy Andras Schiff says Haydn’s ‘Mass in Time of War’ has relevance in today’s world

In life and in art, the past is never past.

Just ask Hungarian-born pianist-conductor András Schiff, who conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic from the piano in Mozart’s Concerto No. 25 (K.503), and then leads the orchestra and L.A. Master Chorale, along with four hand-picked vocal soloists, in Haydn’s “Mass in Time of War” at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Schiff, 62, an internationally acclaimed interpreter of Bach’s keyboard music on modern piano, said earlier this month in San Francisco that years of practicing and recording on period-instruments have enhanced his musicianship in large and mysterious ways.

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A case in point is Schiff’s all-Schubert two-CD set from ECM, which includes the composer’s “Moments musicaux” and Sonata in B-flat (D.960).

Schiff performs on an 1820 fortepiano built in Vienna by Franz Brodmann, giving listeners a chance to get closer to how Schubert himself heard these great scores.

In performance, Schiff mostly plays modern pianos. He said the Brodmann’s action and lower tuning conjured a tenderness and melancholy that have become significant in his evolving interpretations — on the podium and at the keyboard — of his classical repertory of works by Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert.

“My experiences with the old piano has somehow changed my life,” Schiff said, “changed the way I look at this music, and when I play it on a modern piano, it’s always in the back of my mind. Shades of soft and softer dynamics, for example. That is what makes Schubert’s music so special. There’s huge drama in it.”

There’s huge drama of a different kind in Haydn’s stirring “Mass in Time of War,” which Schiff called “very relevant” to our own anxious and troubling times.

Haydn’s 1796 choral masterpiece was first performed in Vienna as Napoleon’s army was consolidating its occupation of Northern Italy by defeating Austria at Rivoli.

The Philharmonic last played the piece at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in 1996 with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting.

“The work is so [contemporary], war and its message,” Schiff said. “Politicians preach peace but are supplying the armaments to Syria. We don’t know how this will all end, but the Mass ends with a wonderful, hopeful Dona nobis pacem (‘give us peace’).”

For Schiff, the two works on the Disney Hall program make a good pairing.

“The tonalities of the Mozart Concerto go with the Haydn Mass, because both are in C major,” he said, “but also there is something military in the opening movement of the concerto. It reminds us of the Marseillaise.”

“The military in the 18th century had a different meaning from now,” he added. “To these people, there was something glorious about it.”

For Schiff, conducting is a natural extension of his piano playing. At his part-time home in London (Schiff became a British citizen in 2001 and was knighted last year), he practices on a Model B Steinway from 1880, once owned by conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. “It has the original hammers and strings and sounds phenomenal,” he said.

“I don’t look at myself as a conductor, but I love it and learn from it,” he said. “I’ve done many times all the Schubert symphonies. So I hear all those trombones in the ‘Great’ C major symphony, and I try to translate those orchestral sonorities onto the keyboard.”

Schiff first conducted the Philharmonic musicians at Disney Hall in 2005.

“These American orchestras are incredibly good,” he said, “and very disciplined. The discipline is much worse in Germany. The sight reading is worse.

“Also, instrumentally — technically — they are better here,” he continued. “You have to work on style, but a good American orchestra is like a great car. You can shape a score any way you want. They can do whatever you ask.”

Schiff also played a recital of the last piano sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in Santa Barbara recently and last Sunday at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Incidentally, after all three of Schiff’s orchestral concerts this week, he’s offering a post-concert Schubert recital featuring his four vocal soloists and the L.A. Master Chorale. Grant Gershon conducts, with Schiff accompanying at the piano.

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