Padding through Bach like a tiger
Michael White at the Oxford International Piano Festival
15 August 2008

Beacon of civilisation though it is in other ways, Oxford has never quite claimed the musical high ground you'd expect. Its choirs, though excellent, live in the shadow of the Cambridge ones. Its alumni list isn't so crowded with celebrity conductors and composers as those of Cambridge. And although it has the oldest public concert room in Britain, not to mention architecturally exquisite halls and chapels, Oxford has a dearth of truly practicable venues for performance. Not a happy situation.

In the past few years, though, there have been some efforts to improve things. One is the Jacqueline du Pre Building, a claustrophobic but useful chamber hall in the grounds of St Hilda's. And another is the Oxford International Piano Festival, which has been running now for a decade alongside its sister venture, the Oxford Philomusica orchestra, under the direction of conductor/pianist Marios Papadopoulos.

This year's festival, like all the others, was a mix of concerts and masterclasses, creating a summer academy with participants from around the world. And it climaxed in two of the more memorable events I've attended in ages, both of them involving Andras Schiff.

They started with a recital in Christ Church Cathedral which I'd normally have written off as a bad place for a concert: acoustically dry and dreadful sightlines. But on this occasion, with a packed audience huddled against a wet and windswept night, it was atmospheric. And Schiff was mesmerising, even when his playing didn't totally deliver in the second half.

The first half was all Bach, grouping together some of those supposedly nationalistic pieces - a French Suite, an English Suite, an Italian Concerto - that bear little scrutiny as anything of the sort since they feature dances from every country going, but nonetheless project a world of intellectual fantasy that Schiff negotiates on his own, idiomatic terms.

Padding with the measured stealth of a tiger through the Allemande of the French Suite No 5, he sprang into the succeeding Courante as though it were waiting prey. And while his readings didn't shine with exuberance or joy, they did convey an inner drama - properly contained within the disciplines of form and always yielding to melodic and harmonic sense, but very present all the same.

The second half was Beethoven - the Hammerklavier - and it was here that Schiff's pursuit of inner drama lost me. He retreated deep into the workings of this never easy piece (hands up who doesn't find it difficult? be honest) to the point where meaning and coherence seemed to vanish. But I daresay that's my failing more than his.

Next morning at St Hilda's he supplied my second memorable event with the most perfectly insightful, practically rewarding masterclasses you could hope to see: a synthesis of calm, considered erudition with instinctive wisdom. And I've since discovered that recordings of Schiff's masterclasses (not from Oxford but from the Royal Academy in London) are available on DVD, issued by something called the Masterclass Media Foundation. I haven't seen these discs but, having watched the real thing, feel I can safely recommend them.

Sunday afternoon's Prom played to a half-empty Albert Hall but rewarded those who came with an alluring if arcane programme. A shotgun marriage of minds across 400 years, it interlaced the sections of a mid-16th century Mass setting by Pierre de Manchicourt with those of Messiaen's mid-20th century Messe de la Pentecôte, a suite for solo organ whose movements reflect on what would be the Propers for that season with titles like "Wind of the Spirit" and "Tongues of Fire" .

In truth, the Messiaen isn't very fiery but sits wrapt in contemplation, microscopically intense and introverted. Written roughly at the same time as the gaudy mayhem of Turangalîla, it is by comparison a model of reserve and taste. And its subtleties of colouration were beautifully realised here by James O'Donnell, the organist of Westminster Abbey and a man experienced in packaging imagination with decorum.

By neat correspondence the Manchicourt was conducted by Andrew Carwood, who now runs the music at London's other great Anglican foundation, St Paul's Cathedral. But the choir here wasn't St Paul's: it was the BBC Singers who, for all their technical proficiency, don't do devotion very well.

There's something roundly secular about their sound, their style, their presentation, which belongs to the recording studio; and it told against them in this music which so much doesn't belong to the studio but to the soul - an accessory not over-prized these days within the corporation but still available to its employees if they made the effort. Reconfigure the next BBC Singers management course as a Douai retreat or Walsingham pilgrimage and who knows? Perhaps you'd hear a difference.