Schiff chose a nineteenth-century Blüthner for Brahms

An orchestra without a separate conductor still needs to listen and respond. András Schiff stressed that chamber-music approach in a 2025 conversation with Jessica Duchen about Schumann and Mendelssohn. It offers a useful way into an earlier project: his Brahms concertos with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

The players recorded both concertos at Abbey Road in December 2019, using period instruments; ECM released the album in 2021. Schiff chose a Leipzig-built Blüthner dating from around 1859, the year Brahms’s First Concerto received its premiere. The date connects the piano to the music’s history without settling how it should be played.

In the later interview, Schiff discussed thinner bass strings and contrasting colours across early keyboards: “Each register of the keyboard is different”. In the orchestra’s Brahms account, he had described music of sensitivity and fine dynamic distinctions. Those observations explain what he values, rather than establishing a contest that every old piano wins.

The linked Adagio is from the First Concerto on the 2021 album. Shift your attention from the piano to an orchestral part, then back again. A historic grand supplies particular possibilities; the musicians still have to decide how to use them together.