Allan Schiller - Concert Pianist

A nice touch was Schiller's joining in with the players' opening tutti before launching into an account glowing with the sensitivity of chamber-music. Mozart described these works as appreciable by both connoisseurs and public; they seem also to communicate in a secret code with the composer himself, and Schiller was alert to all these levels. The odd note was clipped, but there was also well-balanced solo chording, and, in the finale, gentle double-taking humour.

The Birmingham Post

Allan Schiller and the Fitzwilliam Quartet were remarkably successful in Schumann's Quintet in E flat. It is rare to hear a performance inspired by the same kind of youthful passion and lyrical tenderness Schumann felt when he wrotew it. Given that sort of inspiration, its difficulties - including the blending and balancing of piano and strings - seemed to fall away.

The Guardian

S & H Recital Review - John Humphreys and Allan Schiller, piano duet and two pianos, Wigmore Hall, 13th July 2003, (MA)

At 4 o'clock on a scorching Sunday afternoon, a central London concert hall is one of the last places you'd want to be - indeed, I had turned down a chance of a boat trip down the Thames in favour of John Humphrey's and Allan Schiller's piano-duet and piano-duo recital in the Wigmore Hall. Though the Hall - hardly surprisingly - wasn't packed, the nonetheless sizable numbers who turned up were met with a rewardingly unusual programme.

It thus began with the busy textures of Reger's transcription for piano duet of the Sixth 'Brandenburg' Concerto, where the different colours of Bach's instrumental lines rather get lost in the monotonal sonorities of the piano; it thus becomes more an exercise in polyphonic enthusiasm. Busoni's imaginative two-piano transcription of Mozart's Fantasie in F minor, K.608, allowed Humphreys and Schiller to make sense of the texture in a way the Reger had not, and they pushed it to an exciting conclusion. The first half was rounded off with Debussy's rarely heard En blanc et noir, the sound of two pianos coaxing the composer into unusually rumbustious mood.

The second half was dedicated to Busoni, and especially one of the polyphonic masterpieces of piano-writing, his Fantasia contrappuntistica, in its fourth incarnation, the 1922 recasting of the work for two pianos. It was prefaced with his Improvisation on the Bach Chorale 'Wie wohl ist mir', from 1916. It's not often one gets to watch this work being performed in concert, so it's fascinating to see how Busoni orchestrates for the sonorities of the piano, how he develops contrasting colours in the two instruments, reserving his strength for the gloriously resonant first full statement of the chorale in both pianos.Humphreys and Schiller judged the pace perfectly.

The Fantasia contrappuntistica is Busoni's astonishingly inventive creative solution to the unfinished fugue in Bach's Art of Fugue. There's little in music as physically exciting as the sound of two pianos on the hunt, but Humphreys and Schiller didn't give in to the temptation of sheer volume. Instead, they concentrated on the dramaturgy of the piece. It opens (and closes), for example, with the pianos exchanging imperious phrases antiphonally, which Humphreys and Schiller treated as if they were lines from two characters on stage - the Fantasia contrappuntistica requires some attention of its listeners, but this essentially dramatic approach made it both texturally vivid and architecturally clear.

That was good news; better yet is that Humphreys and Schiller are taking both Busoni works, and others, into the studio in September, to record them for Naxos. It will be worth waiting for.

Martin Anderson

These performances stand head and shoulders above most chamber-music accounts, which merely pass muster on CDs today: the highly-gifted and under-recorded Allan Schiller is one of this country's leading chamber-music pianists as well as being a fine virtuoso in his own right. There is an understanding and deep acquaintance with the music in both these works which are quite exceptional: the Elgar in particular receives an exemplary performance which equals the legendary Harriet Cohen/Stratton Quartet 78's.

Musical Opinion

With humorous, rippling playing and a bright clear touch he drew the gently tragic undertones from the music and thus won the sympathy and hearty applause from the audience. Schiller played the dark, mournful opening sensitively, but not sentimentally.his simple, straightforward playing of the inexpressibly moving Larghetto, free of any excess of emotion, and his pensive ensemble with the woodwind, proved him to be a Mozart interpreter of the first rank. The Variations of the final movement could not be played more lucidly than we heard here.

Wuppertal, Germany

Of these concerts the most notable was that given by the English pianist Allan Schiller playing the Haydn Concerto with the Sofia Radio Orchestra. It is an easy, non-virtuoso work, and, in being so, it is difficult to project its lightness and unpretentiousness. But Schiller certainly did. He displayed beautifully the clean lines, the joyfulness and its radiance.

Nation's Culture, Bulgaria

Last night we heard a brilliant performance of Beethoven's 'Emperor' given by Allan Schiller and the Halle Orchestra. If not the grandest conception of the work his version had the utmost sparkle and vivacity of a suave and sensuously refined order. In the Allegro the effect of his playing was rather like that of watching an exotic fish flickering upstream. Here the elaborations of the solo instrument wove deftly through an orchestral setting which was by contrast craggy and somewhat wiry in texture. His modulations and tonal colour were exciting throughout.

The Guardian