Andras Schiff's Bach performances are famous for their clarity and intellectual rigour. In past Edinburgh festivals, Schiff has surveyed nearly all of Bach's keyboard output in a series of late-night concerts at the Usher Hall. This year, he has turned his attention to the solo keyboard concertos, directing the Philharmonia from the keyboard.
Schiff the soloist is a different player from the professorial guardian who guided us through the unaccompanied piano music. No coolness and restraint here: his playing in the concertos was wild, flamboyant and extreme. The G minor Concerto - Bach's own arrangement of his A minor Violin Concerto - was typical. The finale was poised on an interpretive knife edge. Schiff relished Bach's ornamentation as a chance to show off his virtuosic prowess. The tempo was already fast, but he pushed the Philharmonia still quicker in the coda, and risked losing them completely. But somehow the performance was musically coherent. Schiff's impetuous energy and joy in Bach's abundant invention were utterly infectious.
He was even more unpredictable in the E major Concerto, turning the bass line of the first movement into an irresistible groove, over which flew the runs and flurries of his solo part. After the lilting grace of the slow movement, the finale was full of uninhibited humour. Schiff turned the chromatic scales of the minor-key section into drunken lurches from one key to another; the return of major-key music was a sudden jolt from darkness into light. The physical impact of these performances revealed Schiff the showman, as well as the flashy brilliance of Bach's concertos.
