A welcome set of farewells: Elisabeth Brauß at Wigmore Hall

Elisabeth Brauß’ Wigmore Hall recital was themed: each piece was some form of farewell. The teenaged Bach’s Capriccio on the Departure of his Beloved Brother is a curiosity, a keyboard piece with a detailed programme for its sections. Brauß is an unapologetic player of Bach on a modern instrument, using its colours, pedals and power in a performance that offered what the composer might have wanted if he had heard a Steinway grand. That is valid, although others prefer to emulate the lighter touch of earlier instruments. Perhaps the sentiment was provoked by the scenario of departure more than the notes, with rubato in the Adagissimo reflecting friends’ lamentations. The best playing came in the closing fugue deploying the posthorn sound from the departing coach, where Brauß was incisive in the counterpoint.

Perhaps Beethoven recalled that sound in his three-note motto LebewohI (Farewell) that opens his Les Adieux. In 1809 Beethoven’s patron Archduke Rudolph left Vienna with the Imperial family to escape the Napoleonic siege. Beethoven wrote a piece for Rudolph’s departure, which expanded into his only programme sonata, its three movements labelled Farewell, Absence and Return. Brauß is a modern Beethovenian too, with fast and loud playing, and some violent sforzandi . Exciting, and possibly authentic. One commentator said of Beethoven’s sometimes thunderous playing that “a fantasia from him was enough to put a piano out of action”. But the compelling sonata narrative logic of this composer, irresistible at the right pacing and phrasing, was lost in a first movement where each episode was a drama in itself. This was not the case though in the slow movement and the finale, both beautifully played and dramatically apposite.

In the case of Robert Schumann’s Geistervariationen (Ghost Variations) the ‘farewell’ is taken to be the composer’s taking leave of his senses, for this was his last composition before his mental suffering led him into the Rhine and his failed farewell to life. Schumann imagined spirits dictating songs to him. This theme and five variations, like much late Schumann, is rated low in his catalogue. Brahms, editing his friend’s scores, allowed only the theme to be published. Robert told Clara the theme was sung to him by angels, which like everyone else I took to be a sick man’s fantasy. But hearing Elisabeth Brauß play it here, I now know the composer told us the plain truth. Exquisitely poised and phrased, ideal in its feeling which came from the notes as much as from our knowledge of what awaited Schumann. The variations, often dismissed for staying too close to the theme, were here forged by Brauß into one heavenly song. A bold piece of programming, acclaimed by the audience as if the pianist had just played Carnaval.

In June 1939, Prokofiev’s long-time collaborator, the theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold was arrested, and shot eight months later. We can’t know if Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata of 1942 was intended as a farewell, but its strenuous outer movements could be seen as a protest. Its fast, percussive, clamorous opening certainly sounded like that in Brauß’ powerfully driven performance, which still allowed for a degree of relaxation into its questing secondary material, perhaps asking “Why?” She exhibited fine tone and a serene lyrical line in the slow movement, and the roller-coaster toccata finale was a hold-on-to-your-seats thrill, with impressive rhythmic control. Her encore, suitably enough, was the last number of Schumann’s Waldszenen, entitled Abschied.