His Fancy Turns to Schumann

Pianist Andras Schiff played a solo recital on Wednesday in Avery Fisher Hall in New York City. Thursday, he accompanied mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli at Carnegie Hall. Three performances in Davies Hall with the San Francisco Symphony complete Schiff’s three-week U.S. tour, which also included a stop at Kennedy Center in Washington.

Each of those venues holds 2,700 or more. But it’s not necesarry to get lost in a crowd to see Schiff. For his first Southern California appearance in six years, and his only one on this U.S. tour, he’ll play a considerably more intimate space: the newly renovated Sherwood Auditorium at San Diego’s Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla on Monday. That hall holds 492. (Related story, F2.)

“We feel very honored that Mr. Schiff will come play here,” said Neale Perl, executive director of the La Jolla Chamber Music Society, presenter of the event. “Obviously a man like that has more offers than available dates.”

In fact, his dates in the Southland have so far numbered just two. His first was in 1989, at the now-defunct Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena. His last, at the same venue, was in 1990.

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In La Jolla, he’ll play Robert Schumann’s Arabeske, Opus 18; “Davidsbundlertanze,” Opus 6; “Blumenstuck,” Opus 19, and “Symphonische Etuden,” Opus 13.

Reached by phone at his New York hotel shortly before his Carnegie Hall performance with Bartoli, Schiff was startled to be reminded that the same Schumann works save the “Davidsbundlertanze” were included on his 1990 program.

“That would surprise me very much,” Schiff, 43, said. “I don’t recall it. Did I play that? I am very surprised. But then, it’s been ages since I played in Southern California. I wanted to play this program in America [because] these pieces are on my latest CD.”

In fact, Schiff only recalled the first of his two Ambassador recitals. But then, he’s been very busy.

When not touring, the Budapest-born Schiff divides his time among residences in Salzburg, Florence and London. He collaborates regularly with conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Sir Georg Solti and Sandor Vegh, with Bartoli and other vocalists including Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Peter Schreier.

Though recent concerts with Bartoli represent the pair’s first U.S. collaboration, their 1993 album, “The Impatient Lover,” featuring Italian songs by Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and Haydn, garnered them a Grammy for best classical vocal album. Schiff recently performed the complete Schubert piano sonatas in New York, London, Vienna, Milan, Salzburg, Budapest, Cologne, Paris and the Schubertiade Feldkirch in Austria, each a six-recital cycle.

He now records for Time Warner’s Atlantic Classics Teldec label; projects underway include a Mozart disc using the composer’s own instruments, and the complete Beethoven and Bartok piano concertos. Last year, Teldec released his Handel-Brahms-Reger disc and a Schumann disc identical to his program here. (In 1994, the Robert Schumann Society awarded Schiff the first Claudio Arrau Memorial Medal.)

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His London/Decca catalog includes the complete Schubert sonata and song cycles, the complete Bach keyboard concertos with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, all the Mozart piano sonatas and the Mozart piano concertos with Sandor Vegh and the Camerata Academica of the Salzburg Mozarteum--almost complete.

“For some very obscure reason, the American part of London records decided it was not necessary to release ‘The Coronation,’ ” said Schiff, referring to Mozart’s penultimate piano concerto, No. 26 in D. “It’s the only one. It has been out for more than two years in Europe. A lot of people have been looking for it. . . . I don’t know what they are waiting for.

“I loved it, but it was very problematic for me. Mozart left a large part of the piano part unfinished, and it has been messed up by editors. The orchestral parts are complete, but the piano part is not up to the unbelievable standard of the great Mozart concertos. If you play it, you have to do a great deal of composing yourself, complete hundreds of measures missing in the left hand. I waited years and years to get the courage.”

Schiff is particularly fond of his recordings with Vegh, who is lionized by those who know his work. Because the Camerata has no winds, celebrated oboist Heinz Holliger handpicked the wind ensemble that joined the orchestra for Schiff’s Mozart concerto project. Even so, it proved inordinately difficult from the start.

“A big struggle, a big struggle,” Schiff recalled. “I cannot tell you the trouble it was just to get the first record done--and then to continue, to get [London] committed to a cycle. Vegh is a phenomenal musician. But they wanted one of the household conductors, who usually have no understanding of Mozart.”

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Schiff feels that his playing of Mozart, as well as Haydn and Schubert, is “second nature.” Schumann, however, has been a different story.

The music of Schumann and Beethoven, he said, “is a more robust, fuller sound, heavier textures. I waited a very long time to play Beethoven in public. Schumann, I lived with it so long.”

He imagines there would be substantial differences between the way he played Schumann in 1990 and how it will sound on Monday: “Not a deliberate change. . . . It is like a good wine, maybe it tastes better after five years. My approach today, the sound I get from the piano, has more body.”

Yet he also believes that in at least one way his approach remains substantially the same whether it’s Schumann or Haydn, Beethoven or Bartok.

“I see every composer through my experiences with Bach,” Schiff said. “All great music after Bach is related to Bach and polyphony and counterpoint and different voices. . . . We know that all these composers admired Bach the most. Schumann, too. Very much so.”

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Pianist Andras Schiff plays music of Schumann on Monday at Sherwood Auditorium, San Diego’s Museum of Contemporary Art, 700 Prospect St., La Jolla. 8 p.m. $27.50. (619) 459-3728.