Master pianist Andras Schiff returns to Union Theater

Historically conscious pianist Andras Schiff is scheduled to perform at the Wisconsin Union Theater Friday, March 8, at 8 p.m.

“At 46,” says the Baltimore Sun, “the Hungarian-born [Andras] Schiff is considered one of the foremost pianists of our age, a musician as celebrated for his ideas and insight as for his tone and technique.”

History informs Schiff’s music. Considered a major interpreter of Beethoven and Bach, he has conducted orchestras from the keyboard — the way it was done during those composers’ lives. In his Madison performance, Schiff will play music by Beethoven, Janacek and Schumann.

“Politics and art are not really separable,” says Schiff, a Jewish citizen of Austria who has protested the far-right government there in the recent past. “Those who disagree should remember the times when the works of Heine, Mendelssohn and others were thrown into the flames.”

Schiff has collaborated with major orchestras of Europe, North America, Japan and Israel, and appears regularly at the festivals of Salzburg, Vienna, Lucerne, Ansbach and Feldkirch. He was awarded the Bartók Prize in 1991 and the “Claudio Arrau Memorial Medal” from the Robert Schumann Society in Dusseldorf in 1994.

Tickets: $32, (Union members $31, UW–Madison students $15.50), Union Theater Box Office, (608) 262-2201.

The performance is sponsored by the Wisconsin Union Directorate Performing Arts Committee. The Norman Bassett Foundation provides additional support.