Goerne/Haefliger: Wolf and Liszt, 27 September 2013

Wigmore Hall

Wolf – Neue Liebe

Peregrina I & II
Liszt – Blume und Duft
Wolf – An die Geliebte
Liebesbotschaft
Nachtgruß
Michelangelo-Lieder
Liszt – Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam
Vergiftet sind meine Lieder
Laßt much ruhen
Ich möchte hingehn
Des Tages laute Stimmen schweigen
Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh’
Wolf – Harfenspieler I, II, & III
Liszt – Der du von Himmel bist
Wolf – Byron-Lieder
Morgenstimmung

Matthias Goerne (baritone)

Andreas Haefliger (piano)

 

 

A wonderful recital, both in terms of programming and performance! No dubious attempts at ‘light relief’, but an exploration of German song that ranged beyond familiar ‘favourites’ without compromising upon quality. Matthias Goerne was in his element here, well supported – and rather more than supported – by Andreas Haefliger.

 

It was, of course, Haefliger who had the opening word, the introductory harmonies of Neue Liebe, as so often with Wolf, clearly in a line of descent from Wagner and Liszt, without being reducible to those influences, chords from the sepulchre, beautifully voiced, reminiscent from afar of Liszt’s ‘Il penseroso’ from the Italian Années de pèlerinage. The following Peregrina songs, again Mörike settings, offered an interesting case study of how songs that are famously focused upon text can yet emerge as less word-dominated than one might have expected, a consequence both of a fine pianist and a truly collaborative singer. Peregrina II almost sounded at times as if shading into melodrama (in the proper sense), yet somehow melodrama with an exquisite vocal line, Goerne’s crescendo and diminuendo on the last two lines a perfect example of synergy between words and music. The sole Liszt song in the first half, Blume und Duft, emerged as properly Tristan-esque, and for once – an exaggeration, I know, though a pardonable exaggeration – it may have been a matter of Wagnerian influence upon Liszt rather than the other way round, this Hebbel setting having been written in 1860, just after Tristan. In this performance, it was not just the harmony, tonality verging at times upon the suspended, but the vocal line and delivery that shaded into such dangerous territory. I could not help but think what a splendid Kurwenal Goerne would be likely to make in the future – until I consulted his programme biography, to discover that he has already sung the role.

 

Wolf and Mörike returned in the guise of An die Geliebte, whose poetic and musico-dramatic contours were finely drawn by both artists. The quiet ecstasy with which the song concluded could hardly have been bettered. Nachtgruß would soon offer a similar but different form of magic, that of the night, which, in Goerne’s hands, or rather through his voice, left us spellbound. The three Michelangelo-Lieder showed once again a composer in the wake of Wagner and Liszt, nevertheless unmistakeably himself. ‘Alles endet, was entstehet’ almost made Wotan’s Walküre monologue seem like a jeu d’esprit: profound in the best sense, like Goerne’s baritone itself. The final ‘Fühlt meine Seele’ offered again a sensibility that was definitely post-Lisztian, post-Tristan, and yet crucially remained very much of the Lied rather than the opera house or indeed the ‘star’ recital.

 

Liszt remains overlooked, even condescended to, by many who should know better. How people can talk such rubbish about him if they were to hear songs such as these, in performances such as these, I really do not know; perhaps we simply have to accept that the problem lies not with the composer and continue without the not-so-cultured despisers. Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam offered an immediate audition for the Romantic Liszt, especially in the piano: such characteristic figures and harmonies, the Années de pèlerinage again brought to mind, and such flexibility of delivery from both performers. Goerne’s strength of tone in Vergiftet sind meine Lieder, also a Heine setting, and his identification with the text were second to none. Ardour with an undertow of sadness marked the impeccable musical flow of Laßt much ruhen, but it was the relatively early (c. 1845) Georg Herwegh setting, Ich möchte hingehn that seemed to mark the very heart of the recital – or at least a twin heart, with the Michelangelo settings. Tristan-suffused, albeit this time very much avant la lettre, Liszt’s writing and sensibility seem all the more telling, given that it would be Herwegh who would introduce Wagner in his Zurich exile to the philosophy of Schopenhauer. Here, we were led into the world of a somewhat, though only somewhat, more German complement to Liszt’s own Petrarch sonnet settings. Haefliger’s shading and phrasing proved just as impressive as that of his colleague. Wotan again came to mind in the late (1880) Des Tagess laute Stimmen schweigen, Goerne’s audibility and communication at pianissimo, indeed later at ppp, quite breathtaking. The ghostly expressionism of the final kiss ‘Dann kusst euch still und mild die Nacht’ was judged to unexaggerated perfection.

 

Haefliger relished, likewise without unnecessary underlining, the proto-Parsifal progressions of Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh’, before we returned to Wolf, whilst remaining with Goethe, for the three Harfenspieler: the piano’s assumption of the harpist’s role delightful in the first, the syncopation of the second especially unsettling. Remaining with Goethe a little longer, Liszt’s Der du von dem Himmel bist offered something akin to a depressive Liebestraum. Wolf’s two Byron settings from 1896 followed, ‘Keine gleicht von allen Schönen’ sinuous, weighty, and undeniably heartfelt. Morgenstimmung proved the recital’s crowning glory: quite the climax in every respect, both unifying and true culmination.

Andreas Haefliger: Liszt and Schubert, 9 November 2011

Wigmore Hall

Liszt – Années de pèlerinage: Première année – Suisse, S 160
Schubert – Piano Sonata in G major, D 894

The Wigmore Hall has, I think, contributed more than any other London venue to this year’s Liszt bicentenary. Andreas Haefliger contributed the first book of the Années de pèlerinage – Louis Lortie will perform the second next month – alongside Schubert’s G major piano sonata, D 894. One could make connections, of course, but I was not entirely convinced by the juxtaposition; maybe it was better simply to consider this as a concert of two halves, or maybe I found myself too much under the spell cast by Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s visionary programming at the previous night’s Queen Elizabeth Hall concert.

With the memory of Aimard’s recital still fresh, comparison was inevitable. Haefliger did not come off badly at all. If the two pianists’ styles and approaches were often quite different, there was much to learn and much to enjoy from both. ‘Chapelle de Guillaume Tell’ announced not only big tone, Haefliger’s Steinway contrasting with Aimard’s Yamaha, but also resplendent, I am tempted to say ‘modernistic’, clarity alongside the pianist’s generally monumental approach. ‘Au lac de Wallenstadt’ provided a nicely rippling interlude, whilst the ‘Pastorale’ proceeded with properly generative rhythmic impetus, more than a merely thematic nod to Beethoven in general and to his op.28 sonata in particular. Colour and narrative remained of course very much Liszt’s own. ‘Au bord d’une source’ boasted glittering sonority, though Haefliger displayed a degree of untidiness and hardening of tone at climaxes. ‘Orage’, on the other hand, seemed tailor-made to the grand manner adopted, the Steinway truly coming into its own in a tumultuous rejoicing in its capabilities. Lisztian rhetoric and Romantic force of Nature sounded as one.

With ‘Vallée d’Obermann’, Haefliger came into direct ‘competition’ with Aimard. Both pianists displayed unerring command of line. Perhaps surprisingly, Haefliger’s tone was the more crystalline of the two, though lines could dissolve vertically where required, prophetic not only of Wagner’s technique in, say, Tristan und Isolde, but also of the Second Viennese School. Aimard, on the other hand, more strongly foreshadowed the dark expressionism of such ‘music of the future’. I preferred his darker way with Liszt’s climaxes, but there was much to learn from Haefliger’s more ‘objective’ approach, even if again, one had to deal with a degree of hardening at climaxes. Shaping of the more overtly ‘vocal’ lines, however, remained a joy. ‘Eglogue’ offered a charming pendant, whilst ‘Le mal du pays’ offered an intriguing combination of sonority that was still very much of its time and troubled mood that looked forward to the fruits of Liszt’s old age. ‘Les cloches de Genève’ offered quiet – at least to begin with – ecstasy, Liszt’s line spun as if superior Bellini. When the temperature increased, I felt the tempo might have benefited from broadening somewhat. This nevertheless remained an impressive performance.

Command of line was once again apparent in the first movement of the Schubert sonata, though I wondered whether Haefliger focused a little too much upon the bright, even glittering, side of life here, especially in the second group. There was, though, some beautifully hushed playing too. The development had Beethovenian purpose, though it could seem unduly stark, even monochrome, at times. Haefliger paced the movement well, throughout its well-nigh Brucknerian yet surely ‘heavenly’ length. The opening of the second movement sounded as a sincere lyrical outpouring, though the minor-key episodes perhaps intruded a little too violently. (One might well argue, though, for the necessity of contrast here.) Did gruffness shade into heavy-handedness in the minuet? Perhaps, but the lyrical response was delightful – and painful, in the best sense. The trio was likewise pastoral yet discomfiting. If the finale is always likely to prove somewhat enigmatic, was it a little too much so here? There were some charming and some striking moments, to be sure, but overall line seemed a little hesitant; Sometimes the best way to deal with a door is to walk straight through it. On the other hand, the lack of easy ‘solution’ had more than a little to commend it.

Holzmair/Haefliger - Winterreise, 29 November 2009

Wigmore Hall

Wolfgang Holzmair (baritone)
Andreas Haefliger (piano)

This was the third and, most likely, last of my three Winterreisen this year, following Thomas Quasthoff and Daniel Barenboim in Berlin, and Matthias Goerne and Christoph Eschenbach, also at the Wigmore Hall. All three were very different performances, and not necessarily in ways I might have expected. Quasthoff and Barenboim, insofar as I could discern, given a supremely objectionable audience, proved the most Classical in outlook. Goerne and Eschenbach, not without their intimations of the twentieth century, might nevertheless be considered the most Romantic in their approach. To my surprise, it was the highly dramatic performance of Wolfgang Holzmair and Andreas Haefliger that took us deepest into the expressionist realm.

Holzmair’s general approach to the cycle is quite unlike any other I can recall. From the first words of Gute Nacht, one heard a directness of speech akin to poetry reading, the speech rhythms of Wilhelm Müller’s verse replicated in a fashion one might expect more of Mussorgsky or Janáček than Schubert. I might be tempted to call the performance operatic, were that term not so sullied with inappropriate Italianate connotations. Musico-dramatic then, for Wagner more than once came to mind: roles as diverse as Amfortas, Mime, and Tannhäuser. Perhaps it is the lightness of Holzmair’s baritone helps one think in terms of tenor roles; at any rate, this is a very different voice from that of Quasthoff or Goerne. Holzmair is not at all an artist to subordinate drama to musical beauty. Some might feel affronted that he does quite the opposite, and there is a degree of loss, but no single performance can be all-encompassing. He is unafraid to make sounds which, considered in themselves, might be ugly: again Wagner and indeed Schoenberg are not so far off the mark here. It also seems to me – and I wonder if I am being merely fanciful – that there is something specifically Austrian to Holzmair’s reading; certain vowels sound far more Viennese than hochdeutsch. Haefliger, moreover, proved anything but a reticent partner. At times, his part sounded well-nigh orchestral: more so, interestingly, than that of the conductor Barenboim.

This winter journey, then, was bleak from the onset of Haefliger’s insistent tread to Gute Nacht. Moments of repose, of beauty even, were rare. Risks were taken, for insistence the extreme rubato in Die Wetterfahne, suggestive of the possibility that the weather-vane might turn any which way. The wind, after all, ‘plays with hearts inside’. Occasionally such risks did not quite pay off; for instance, there were moments in Gefrorne Tränen and Rückblick when the performers were not quite together. Yet the dramatic end was always paramount, never more so than in the frozen rage of the final stanza to Erstarrung, or the freezing wind from voice and piano in Der Lindenbaum. A truly terrifying crescendo upon the words, ‘Und der weiche Schness zerrint,’ ensured that even the possibility of a warmer wind brought no consolation. Again, this might well be considered one-sided, and is far from the only path to follow, but it worked.

Frühlingstraum, a rare opportunity for Schubert’s aching beauty to manifest itself, was almost unbearable, the return to the major mode for ‘Ich träumte von Lieb’ und Liebe’ heartbreaking. In his harmonic preparation, Haefliger knew precisely where he was taking us – and why. Der greise Kopf was very slow – but again, it worked. In the piano prelude to Letzte Hoffnung, there was an almost pointillistic, Webern-like quality to be heard: no surprise, if one consults the score, for it even looks like late Brahms or Webern. A modernistic, fragmentary quality informed both of the first two stanzas, rendering all the more shocking Holzmair’s desperate lyricism when considering that the leaf might fall to the ground. A couple of songs on, and if you found Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau hectoring, you would certainly have felt the same of Holzmair’s Der stürmische Morgen. Yet this was a particular conception of a particular song. In Täuschung, Haefliger once again conjured up a fleeting image of beauty – Täuschung (delusion) indeed – seemingly derived from, or at least related to, the piano impromptus in its rhythmic and harmonic pointing.

This could only be a momentary distraction, however, from the ineffable sadness characterising Der Wegweiser. Here, Holzmair exhibited a prayer-like calm, beseeching someone or something in the second stanza: ‘I have, after all, done no wrong...’. Yet what does that someone or something care about that? The spareness of the piano writing in the final stanza sounded closer to late Liszt than I have ever heard before: chilling. After that, the sad dignity of the chords in Das Wirtshaus was almost more than I could take, though Holzmair managed to ratchet up the tension still further, with a bare honesty of expression far removed from conventional beauty at the end of the song. Der Leiermann brought a direct, deathly simplicity, which chilled to the bone. Rage – and what rage there had been! – was gone. As ever, Holzmair brought one so close to the verse itself, music almost negating itself. I was terrified. Even the inevitable return – had they ever gone away? – of the coughers could not quite disrupt the awestruck silence that ensued.

Salzburg Festival (4): Goerne/Haefliger - Wolf and Liszt, 8 August 2009

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Wolf – Neue Liebe
Wolf – Peregrina I and II
Liszt – Blume und Duft
Wolf – An die Geliebte
Wolf – Liebesbotschaft
Wolf - Nachtgruß
Wolf – Drei Gedichte aus Michelangelo
Liszt – Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam
Liszt – Vergiftet sind meine Lieder
Liszt – Laßt mich ruhen
Liszt – Ich möchte hingehn
Liszt – Des Tages laute Stimmen schweigen
Liszt – Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh
Wolf – Harfenspieler I, II, and III
Liszt – Der du von dem Himmel bist
Wolf – Keine gleicht von allen Schönen
Wolf – Sonne der Schlummerlosen
Wolf – Morgenstimmung

Matthias Goerne (baritone)
Andreas Haefliger (piano)

Liszt was in many respects the most extraordinary composer of an extraordinary century, yet he still needs fighting for. This year, the Salzburg Festival has certainly done its bit, with a series at the Mozarteum of eight Liszt-Szenen concerts; regrettably, I was only able to catch this, the last. All but the first, an all-Liszt recital from Arcadi Volodos, presented Liszt’s music in conjunction with that of other composers. Bach, Galina Ustolvskaya, Busoni, Ligeti, Frank Martin, Shostakovich, Paganini, Alkan, and Schoenberg had already made their appearances; now it was the turn of Hugo Wolf. And there was arguably a third composer present, if unperformed: Liszt’s friend and subsequently son-in-law, Wagner. Nor should one forget – and how could one? – the presence of Schubert, to whom all three composers rendered tribute in their different ways.

The musical relationship between Liszt and Wagner is extremely complex and remains to be fully explored. That between Wagner and Wolf only runs one way, of course, but is no less noteworthy for that; from the time of Wagner’s visit to Vienna in 1875, for performances of Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, Wolf counted himself a ‘Wagnerian’, and both his musical works and critical writings bear witness to that. Wagner even looked over, albeit in all too cursory fashion, the budding composer’s works. The predictable lack of interest clearly hurt Wolf, since he recorded a dream a few months later, in which Wagner ‘would not hear’ of looking at his scores. It did nothing, however, to dim his enthusiasm. Moreover, Wolf would receive – again, predictably – encouragement from the Abbé Liszt, visiting Vienna shortly after the Master of Bayreuth had passed away. Wolf’s musical and critical works would also witness his enthusiasm for Liszt. I mention such connections not only because they interest me, though they do, but because they came to mind during the recital, and not only on account of the programming, but also on account of the performances from Matthias Goerne and Andreas Haefliger.

Anyway, on to the recital itself: a Liederabend of rare quality. Had this taken place at the Wigmore Hall, I am sure that it would have been sold out within minutes, so I was extremely surprised to see several empty seats in the Grosser Saal of the Mozarteum. No matter: it was the absentees’ loss, not ours. There were few rays of sunshine to be glimpsed, as was made clear by Goerne’s tone in the opening Mörike setting, Neue Liebe. Is it possible, on this earth, for a man to be another’s so entirely as he might wish? The long nights upon which the poet has mused upon it have been productive and the blackness of tone upon the answer ‘nein’ left one in no doubt as to the finality of response. Here, are as in all of the Wolf songs, words were rightly to the fore. This does not mean that the music is secondary, far from it, but it makes little sense considered in ‘absolute’ terms; not for nothing was Wolf such a partisan for Liszt and Wagner against Brahms. Haefliger provided abundant reminder of Wolf’s heroes in a richly Romantic reading of the piano part. Remaining with Mörike, we next heard the two Peregrina songs. Haefliger’s accounts were full of revealing detail, such as the crescendo following the invitation of the ‘unwissend Kind’. Just how unknowing is that innocent child? How can we know? And how innocent are we? That we can know only too well. Performed, quite rightly, as a pair, the two songs culminated in Lisztian rapture and the snares of the post-Tristan hot-house. (Szymanowski is not at all dissimilar.) Yet formal discipline was also emphasised by both musicians; these were not rhapsodic performances.

A Lisztian island appeared upon the horizon, the composer’s only appearance ‘as himself’ in the first ‘half’ (actually much shorter than the second). Even the freshness of this song, Blume und Duft, and the performers’ interpretation had to disappear; suddenly a chilling perception of mortality was ours. Haefliger’s piano epilogue ensured that the major mode sounded anything but affirmative.

We returned to Wolf for the remainder of the first section. Haefliger’s performance of the piano part in Liebesbotschaft vividly brought to light the stomach butterflies of romantic love, above which Goerne’s ardour, perhaps even naïveté, furnished what is, for Wolf, perhaps a surprisingly ‘vocal’ vocal line. The Michelangelo-Lieder certainly dispelled any romantic illusions such a song might have inspired. Wohl denk’ ich oft took one from desolation to exultation, but ambiguity could not help but be present. Very occasionally here, Goerne’s notes were not ideally centred. (I only mention this since it was so rare a technical flaw; only a Beckmesser would really care.) Alles endet, was entstehet took us on a different, related journey, from Erda (everything must perish) almost but not quite to the precipice of the Schoenberg of the Book of the Hanging Gardens (again, everything must perish, yet in a more frightening way). Hope once again reared its head in Fühlt meine Seele, but piano and voice necessarily remained infused with longing: is there any escape from that ‘furchtbare Not’ so completely represented and intensified in Tristan? The fury of the impossible raised itself when Goerne asked ‘ Was ich ersehne.../Ist nicht in mir: sag mir, wie ich’s erwerbe?’ (‘What I yearn for .../is not in myself: tell me, how might I win it?’)

With the opening of the second part of the recital, Liszt had a sequence to himself. Piano and voice immediately took us into the realm of fantastic longing in the beautiful Heine setting, Ein Fichtebaum steht einsam. Liszt might not present so desolate a world-view as Wolf or Wagner, but the dreams of a spruce tree for a palm tree have their own sadness to convey – and so they did here. The anger heard from both musicians in the subsequent Heine song, Vergiftet sind meine Lieder, confirmed the rightness of the title: ‘Poisoned are my songs’. Perhaps Goerne shouted a little here, but the dramatic was far from poisoning the musical. That quintessential Lisztian quiet rapture was to the fore in Ich möchte hingehn. One cannot but think of Tristan when one hears Liszt’s premonition of that chord in an 1844 setting of Georg Herwegh’s verse. Inspired by his final reunion with Caroline de Saint-Cricq, it represents sadness in remembrance of first love rather than metaphysical catastrophe, yet it would be Herwegh who would, a decade later, introduce Wagner to Schopenhauer and thus dimly herald the road to Tristan; even as early as this, the socialist radical poet sounds oddly resigned. It was therefore a masterstroke of programming to follow the song with Des Tages lautes Stimmen schweigen, which opened in this performance with a fine sense of eventide, temporal and metaphysical. The tempo adopted was so slow that, in lesser hands, it might have ground to a halt; this performance, however, was simply spellbinding. In the final song of this Liszt group, the opening and concluding chords hinted at Parsifal: Liszt, once again, as Alan Walker once put it, stealing from the future of music. Unusually succinct for Liszt, especially before the strange works of his later years, this is a gem and was delivered as such.

The final six songs returned to Wolf, albeit with a Lisztian intermission. They sounded as they were: the culmination of a highly intelligent, highly moving programme. I was especially taken with Haefliger’s unsettling syncopation in the second of the Harfenspieler songs from Goethe. It was all the more unsettling for its subtlety, its lack of exaggeration. By contrast, both singers, could, where necessary, produce enough volume to raise the roof, as they showed in the third of these songs. Perhaps the most splendid programming touch of all was to conclude with Morgenstimmung: a wonderful surprise, given the prevailing mood of the recital. How might one vanquish feelings for which Weltschmerz almost seems too tame a description? With a new dawn, which harks back to an old dawn, indeed the original dawn of creation. ‘The Lord speaks: “Let there be light!”’ Then indeed ‘must the darkness vanquish’, happily putting one in mind of earlier musical precedents, not least, in this anniversary year, Haydn and Mendelssohn. One word from Robert Reinick’s verse, ‘freudejauchzend’, summed up the performance of this marvellous song: exulting. An ecstatic richness of tone in both parts, initiated by the Creative act, culminated in the defiance of ‘Herr, laß uns kämpfen, laß uns siegen!’ (‘Lord, let us fight, let us triumph!’) That is certainly what Goerne and Haefliger accomplished in this recital.

Andreas Haefliger piano recital, 12 November 2008

Wigmore Hall

Janáček – Piano sonata 1.x.1905, ‘From the street’
Beethoven – Piano sonata no.21 in C major, op.53, ‘Waldstein’
Beethoven – Piano sonata no.24 in F sharp major, op.78
Brahms – Piano sonata no.2 in F sharp minor, op.2

Andreas Haefliger (piano)

Andreas Haefliger is a musician I have long admired, his intelligence in terms of programming and performance an example to many others. This recital, however, part of the London Pianoforte Series, was profoundly disappointing, the only estimable performance being the first, that of Janáček’s piano sonata.

As it stands, the sonata is in two movements, the composer having destroyed the third prior to the premiere. (He also attempted to destroy the other two shortly after, but the pages thrown into the Vltava failed to sink.) Like so many ‘unfinished’ works, however, the sonata works perfectly well as it stands; I have never felt the lack of a finale, intriguing though the prospect may be. The balance and development Haefliger posited between the Presentiment – Con moto and Death – Adagio seemed beyond reproach, reminiscent of Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony. Janáček’s soundworld was captured from the outset, as was the characteristic tension between fluidity and stubbornness of repetition, especially during the first movement. Haefliger evinced an almost Ravelian delight in sonority but the dark Moravian soul could only be Janáček’s. The adagio proceeded as a sung lament for, in the composer’s words, ‘a humble worker František Paclík, stained with blook. He came only to plead for a university, and was struck down by murderers.’ The reality of the demonstrations of 1905 was a good deal more complex than that but for the duration of the sonata, we could all sympathise with Janáček’s Czech nationalism. There was a calm inner strength to this movement, possessed of the same inner obstinacy as the first, which grew in strength until reaching a truly Romantic climax. Haefliger’s tone was full but never forced, subsiding as if to return us to everyday life, leaving behind a memorial that triumphantly vindicated words from the composer quoted in the programme: ‘A fellow was holding forth to me about how only the notes themselves meant anything in music. And I say they mean nothing at all unless they are steeped in life, blood, and nature, Otherwise they are like playthings, quite worthless.’ Take that, Stravinsky.

After the Janáček, Haefliger’s Beethoven proved quite a shock. The first movement of the Waldstein sonata was taken ruinously fast, leading to more than one notable slip in the semiquaver runs. I doubt that such a tempo could ever have worked, but the pianist should certainly then have slowed considerably for the second group, which utterly failed to melt hearts. It actually was slower on repetition of the exposition, but this sounded merely arbitrary. The development section was impassioned but also generalised – and still too fast. The harmonic surprises that mark its conclusion and the dawn of the recapitulation were masterfully presented, opening up a whole new world. These were breathtaking but it was more than a little too late. The coda sounded more like a series of finger exercises than middle-period Beethoven. There was a nicely mysterious opening to the Introduzione, whose rests were really made to tell. Sung, sustained: there was a true sense of the ineffable. Moreover, the rondo emerged from these shadows with profound inevitability. Thereafter, however, much was heavy-handed and plodding. I am usually the last person to complain of excessive Romanticism, but there is something awry when this music sounds more like a Liszt transcription. (I was put in mind of the Schubert-Liszt Erlkönig.) The prestissimo coda sounded utterly unprepared, merely tacked on. It was headlong but not exultant. The F sharp major sonata, which followed after the interval, was better but far from startling. The extraordinary four-bar introduction sounded soft-focussed rather than poetic. Whilst the rest of the movement continued amiably enough, it lacked distinctiveness. And the Allegro vivace lacked the economical humour that points forward to the Eighth Symphony. It was fluently dispatched but little more.

We do not hear Brahms’s piano sonatas so very often. I suspect that anyone coming to the F sharp minor sonata ‘cold’ would, from this performance, have struggled to ascertain the identity of the composer. This may be early Brahms but I have never heard it sound so utterly unlike him. Haefliger’s technique was certainly up to the notes. There was some splendid virtuosity here – at least on its own terms, especially in the second movement variations. However, there was a curiously – I am tempted even to say bizarrely – rhapsodic sense to all four movements and to the whole. I do not mean that in a sense akin to Brahms’s own later rhapsodies, which are anything but sprawling or undirected. Much of this sounded like minor Liszt. There was a series of fleeting impressions, sometimes impressive as episodes, but with little sense of connection to an overarching structure. And if we know anything of Brahms, it is his iron-clad command of formal structure. Another, at least in terms of the piano music, would be his utterly characteristic sonority. Again, Haefliger suggested Liszt or perhaps Chopin, but rarely Brahms; dazzling brightness replaced mahogany. Most perplexing.