Schubert: Franz Schubert

   in Piano International (Sep, 2015)
Whether it’s in his role as pianist or conductor, Andras Schiff brings a distinctively devotional sensibility to his musicianship. So it’s no surprise that the Hungarian artist prefaces his latest release on ECM with an engaging essay titled ‘Confessions of a Convert’ – the conversion in question involving his recent enthusiasm for performing Schubert on a period fortepiano, having critiqued and even ridiculed the zealots of historically informed performance in former times. ‘Playing on fortepianos – and on clavichords – should be compulsory for all pianists,’ he now declares.

In fact Schiff had been testing the waters for some time, playing Mozart’s fortepiano in the late 1980s in Salzburg (‘a life-changing …