Who needs another recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations? After all, there have been so many great recordings of the work already – Landowska, Kempff, Gould, Pinnock, and Leonhardt, to name a few – that surely no one needs another recording of the Goldberg. Actually, everyone needs another recording of the Goldbergs provided that it's a recording of a great performance. There's too much in the Goldberg – too much brilliance, too much sorrow, too much humor, too much spirituality – for any one performance, even the best performance, to contain all of it. So long as the performance honors the work's honesty, integrity, and virtuosity, there's always room for another Goldberg on the shelf. This 2001 recording by Andras Schiff belongs on any shelf of great Goldbergs. Schiff has everything it takes – the virtuosity; the integrity; and most importantly, the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual honesty – to turn in a great Goldberg. Indeed, Schiff has already done so in his 1982 Decca recording of the work, a lucid and pellucid performance of tremendous beauty and depth. But as good as the 1982 recording was, the 2001 recording is better.

Surely Bach’s French Suites, which he composed during his years at Cöthen (1717–1723), are among the finest inducements to practise that any teacher has ever made to a pupil. In this case Bach wrote them for his young wife, Anna Magdalena. The over-riding impression left by these suites is one of endearing tunefulness. Clavier-Übung II is a later collection of didactic keyboard pieces. It comprises two greatly contrasted works: the Italian Concerto and the Overture in the French Style. These performances admirably demonstrate the thoughtful and persuasive approach that András Schiff adopts when performing Bach. Recorded live at the Bachfest 2010, Protestant Reformed Church of Leipzig, 11 June 2010.

“My enthusiasm for Brahms goes back to my youth, and the piano concertos are largely responsible for it,” writes Sir András Schiff in a liner note for this remarkable new recording. It finds the great pianist reassessing interpretive approaches to Brahms in the inspired company of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. To fully bring out the characteristics of Brahms’s music Schiff’s choice of instrument is a Blüthner piano built in Leipzig around 1859, the year in which the D minor concerto was premiered. The historically informed Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment plays with the flexibility, attitude, and responsiveness of a chamber music ensemble, as they work without a conductor, listening attentively to each other. András Schiff’s collaboration with the orchestra in a series of concerts was widely acclaimed: “Brahms’s First Piano Concerto was reborn thanks to the OAE’s incisive playing and András Schiff’s characterful phrasing”, The Guardian exclaimed. The musicians’ mutual wish to recapture the experience led to the present double album, recorded in London in December 2019.

The gentle melancholy of the "Trout" quintet is beautifully realized here by Andras Schiff and members of the Hagen Quartet. The final two movements almost seem to be one longer movement with a unity of expression between them that is most compelling, to the extent that the themes of the final movement have the feel of being further-flung variations of the "Trout" theme itself. The lower strings are particularly effective in these movements, and Schiff's lucid and un-plushy Bosendorfer sound is ideal. The earlier movements had the feel of a Dumka before Dvorak, with their alternation of more assertive and more quiet sections – but it's the melancholy character that wins out and gives this performance its particular force.

Three of the greatest sets of keyboard variations ever composed are presented here, performed by three of today’s greatest artists. András Schiff, Daniel Barenboim and Yefim Bronfman go to the heart of these monumental creations in performances that are highly personal. They sensitively balance the contrasting aims of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, who were often referred to by nineteenth-century German critics as the ‘Three Bs’ because of their supposed primacy in the history of central European classical music.

Two great artists, pianist András Schiff and composer/clarinettist Jörg Widmann, join forces for the first time on record, performing Brahms’s late masterpieces, the clarinet sonatas op. 120, written in 1894. In between the sonatas Schiff plays Widmann’s evocative Intermezzi for piano. As Jörg Widmann explains in a programme note, these are works inspired by his friendship with András Schiff and by a shared love of Brahms, to whom they pay tribute. The album was recorded at Neumarkt’s Historischer Reitstadel.

This radiant and nostalgic portrait at the same time constitutes a precious testimony on the art of a great lady of the song on the dawn of a career which one guesses already prestigious.

Distinguished Bach specialist Sir András Schiff returned to the BBC Proms in 2018 to present Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Extending the variety already evident in Book I (available on 2.110653), Bachs effortless brilliance and new-found sonorities push harmony and counterpoint further than ever with a combination of ancient and modern styles, church austerity and galant lightness. Schiff has said that no-one combines the sacred and the secular as Bach does, and this is comprehensively demonstrated in Bachs fascinating and challenging sequence. This performance in the Royal Albert Hall was described as a musical meditation for our troubled times by the Independent.

Johann Sebastian Bach was undoubtedly the greatest musical thinker of his age. Dubbed ‘the Old Testament of music’ by the conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow, The Well-Tempered Clavier is acknowledged to be one of the most significant works ever written for the keyboard. Each of these 24 preludes and fugues encapsulates its own mood, and Bach’s delight in mixing technical strictness with freedom of expression has made this work an indispensable element of Western culture for centuries. Sir András Schiff is heralded as one of the finest Bach interpreters today, and this first complete performance at the prestigious BBC Proms was summed up as ‘stupendous’ by The Independent.