He creates the perfect illusion that the piano is veritably singing; his playing, moreover, displays an inexhaustible range of colours. Sir András Schiff is a phenomenal musician, an exciting figure who radiates intelligence and charisma. He made many recordings for Decca before switching to the discriminating ECM label in 2015. He is coming to the Dvořák Prague Festival as an artist-in-residence, and the first of his performances will be a solo recital.

Two items on the programme are works by Dvořák’s admirer and friend, Leoš Janáček. The cycle On an Overgrown Path presents a wonderful opportunity for Schiff to depict the colours and moods – which he realises with perfect mastery. When listening to it, one can scarcely believe that, when composing the cycle, Janáček did not yet know Debussy’s music. Janáček’s composition I. X. 1905 (“From the Street”), also referred to as a sonata, tells the dramatic story of the death of a young man during the suppression of a demonstration by Czech patriots in Brno. The author of the cycle Davidsbündlertänze is the German Romantic composer Robert Schumann. In the hands of the soulful virtuoso Schiff, there is an encounter between two extraordinary poets of the piano. Then at the conclusion, they are joined by a predecessor who is no less poetic: commemorating Franz Schubert and his beautiful works are two movements from the unfinished Sonata in C Major (“Reliquie”), one of the many rare treasures the composer left to us.