IT was impossible not to be quietly overwhelmed yesterday at the end of Andras Schiff's second concert in his survey of Schumann's piano music. As Schiff's playing of the Geister Variations took off from the printed page and floated into another sphere, the narrative description of the circumstances of Schumann's life at the time of the composition became magnetic.

Ten days before his madness compelled him to throw himself into the Rhine, Schumann had written down the piece. Between that episode and the composer committing himself into an asylum where he spent the rest of his life, lay a few days where he must have experienced some lucidity: during those days

he made a final copy of the Geister Variations.

Schiff - never a pianist to romanticise the moment - somehow touched the exact spirit of this music, especially in the final variation where a clear, expressive melody floated above a cloudy, veiled, murmuring accompaniment At the end, as it dissolved into silence, Schiff sat, hands poised motionless above the keyboard, unmoving, and allowing the silence to hang in the air for what seemed a long, long time. It was an extraordinary moment, filled with emotion and absolute stillness.

And it came at the end of a recital full of fascinating playing where Schiff, a supremely intelligent musician, performed a whole string of character pieces - Papillons, Night Pieces, Songs of the Morning, and Kreisleriana - without once being tempted into over-pictorial characterisation. Whether at his most coolly brain-powered, or his most powerfully energetic, Schiff always seems to hold the emotional extremes of this man's music in a subtle and refined balance. More of Schiff's Schumann on Monday.

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