CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
András Schiff

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Friday, April 17th, 2009 at 8:00 PM

“music of the highest order”—Boston Herald

Pianist András Schiff’s previous Carnegie Hall performance of Beethoven sonatas, part of his two-season-long cycle of these works, was hailed as “cogent, vital … a fine-grain look at the intricacy of Beethoven’s structures” (New York Times). Schiff continues here with three of the composer’s late sonatas, including a contrapuntal titan—the “Hammerklavier.”

András Schiff, Piano

BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 27 in E Minor
BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 28 in A Major, Op. 101
BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 29 in B-flat Major, Op. 106, "Hammerklavier"

Encore:
BACH Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903

András Schiff, Piano
András Schiff was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1953 and started piano lessons at the age of five with Elisabeth Vadász. Subsequently, he continued his musical studies at the Ferenc Liszt Academy with Professor Pál Kadosa, György Kurtág, and Ferenc Rados, and in London with George Malcolm. Recitals and special cycles such as the major keyboard works of J. S. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, and Bartók form an important part of Mr. Schiff’s activities. In 2004 he began a series of performances in Europe exploring the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas in chronological order—a project recorded live for ECM New Series, to be released in eight volumes through 2008.

The Beethoven Sonata Project in its entirety continues this season at Carnegie Hall, Los Angeles’s Disney Hall, San Francisco’s Symphony Hall, and Ann Arbor’s Hill Auditorium. Individual recitals are also slated for Chicago, North Carolina, Ottawa, Philadelphia, Princeton, and Washington, DC.

In 1999, Mr. Schiff created his own chamber orchestra, the Cappella Andrea Barca, for a seven-year series of the complete Mozart piano concertos, taking place at the Mozartwoche of the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum in Salzburg. The group, consisting of international soloists, chamber musicians, and close friends, toured North America during the 2005–2006 and 2006–2007 seasons in a series of concerts at Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. The six concerts included 12 of the Mozart piano concertos, chamber music and symphonies.

Mr. Schiff has annual engagements with the Philharmonia Orchestra, London, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe as conductor and soloist. He is a regular visitor as conductor and soloist with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Budapest Festival Orchestra, and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He has conducted Bach’s B-Minor Mass and Haydn’s Creation with the London Philharmonia and was conductor and soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe on a critically acclaimed tour of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.

Since childhood he has enjoyed playing chamber music, and, from 1989 until 1998, he was artistic director of the internationally renowned Musiktage Mondsee chamber music festival near Salzburg. In 1995, together with Heinz Holliger, he founded the Ittinger Pfingstkonzerte in Kartause Ittingen, Switzerland. In 1998, Mr Schiff started a similar series, entitled Hommage to Palladio at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. From 2004 to 2007 he was artist in residence of the Kunstfest Weimar. In the 2007–2008 season he was pianist in residence of the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Mr. Schiff has established a prolific discography, including recordings for Teldec (1994–1997), London/Decca (1981–1994), and, since 1997, ECM New Series. Recordings for ECM include the complete solo piano music of Beethoven and Janáček, a solo disc of Schumann piano pieces, and his second recording of Bach “Goldberg” Variations. He has received several international recording awards, including two Grammy Awards for Best Classical Instrumental Soloist (Without Orchestra) for the Bach English Suites, and Best Vocal Recording for Schubert’s Schwanengesang with tenor Peter Schreier; in addition, for the 49th annual Grammy Awards, he was nominated for Best Classical Album (Without Orchestra) for the second volume of his Complete Beethoven Sontata recordings for ECM. In 2009, Mr. Schiff will release an all-Schumann disc on the EMI label.

Among other honors, Mr. Schiff was awarded the Bartók Prize in 1991 and the Claudio Arrau Memorial medal from the Robert Schumann Society in Düsseldorf in 1994. In March 1996, Mr. Schiff received the highest Hungarian distinction, the Kossuth Prize, and in May 1997 he received the Leonie Sonnings Music Prize in Copenhagen. He was awarded the Palladio d’Oro by the city of Vicenza, and the Musikfest-Preis Bremen for “outstanding international artistic work” in 2003. Mr. Schiff has received two awards in recognition of his Beethoven Performances: In June 2006, he became an Honorary Member of the Beethoven House in Bonn, and in May 2007 he was presented with the renowned Italian Prize, the Premio della critica musicale Franco Abbiati, in recognition of his Beethoven sonata cycle. In October 2007, Mr. Schiff was honored by the Royal Academy of Music with the institution’s prestigious Bach Prize, sponsored by the Kohn foundation; the annual prize is awarded to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the performance and/or scholarly study of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

In 2006, András Schiff and the music publisher G. Henle began an important Mozart edition project. In the course of the next few years there will be a joint edition of Mozart’s piano concertos in their original version, to which Mr. Schiff is contributing to the piano parts, the fingerings, and the cadenzas where the original cadenzas are missing. In addition, in 2007 both volumes of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier were edited in the Henle original text with fingerings by Mr. Schiff.

András Schiff has been made an Honorary Professor by the Music Schools in Budapest, Detmold, and Munich. In 2001, Mr. Schiff became a British citizen; he resides in Florence and London and is married to the violinist Yuuko Shiokawa.