Deutsche Grammophon recently released Maurizio Pollini’s final recording, one he shares with his son Daniele. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s an all Schubert programme, including the Fantasia in F minor for four hands (Schubert, DGG 486 6398). It’s a beautiful and poignant disc: just how beautiful and poignant I hadn’t fully appreciated pre-Schu. What this unassuming little device does is capture or heighten the sense of human agency in a recording, not just the sense that it’s the music is the product of people playing instruments, but the sense that they are actually trying to communicate something by doing it.
You can reduce the Schu’s impact to a laundry list of sonic affects: in increased sense of transparency and immediacy, focussed energy, musical articulation and flow. Phrasing is far more apparent, as is the rise and fall through those phrases. Pauses become laden with meaning, the weight and accent on a note becomes both more obvious, but also more clearly defined relative to the note that follows. If you know Pollini’s playing and you apply those sonic qualities to it, it’s readily apparent just how profound an impact they’ll have on the performance. The result is at once more relaxed and more purposeful, less forced and more considered. They release a grace and articulation in the playing which underlines just why Pollini occupied such a preeminent position amongst contemporary pianists – but also why he almost always performed solo. I never understood why his concerts offered a ‘pot-luck’ approach to the programme – a “turn up and see what he plays” arrangement that’s so completely at odds with current notions of concert and performer promotion. But playing what you feel like in the moment makes perfect sense when you play with this much feeling.
If the Pollini disc is a revelation, the Schus perform similar magic with other artists and musical genres. Patti Smith’s cover of ‘After The Gold Rush’ (Banga, Sony/Columbia 88697222172) offers an obvious next step, with its sparse piano/guitar arrangement and exposed vocal. Once again, the Schus (by now I’m using them throughout the system) invest the performance with an almost ghostly presence and dimensionality. The rise and fall in the piano part is poised and sculpted, but it’s the precisely measured vocal that really comes to life, with a natural diction and enunciation that is strikingly direct and communicative. The children’s voices that comprise the finale, gain not just identity and separation, but a particular poignance too. Once again, the message is front and centre, pushed there by the music.
Multiple Schu’s definitely generate a cumulative effect, adding additional range and power to the musical impact. But as is often the case, at first it seems like each additional Schu offers a smaller incremental improvement over the one before: right up to the point where you put the last one in the system. That’s when the whole performance seems to fall into focus, all of the benefits seamlessly combined into a single sonic and emotional whole. Looking at the product generating this improvement in musical performance, it’s hard to credit. Fortunately, you don’t need to take my word for it. The Schus are not only a completely reversable mod (so that you can suck them and see with impunity) but they are so cheap – at least in audiophile terms – as to be considered a trivial (and recoverable!) expense.
