The audience was still, Davies Symphony Hall stood still, all still as my heart, while Helene Grimaud played Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor. Then, she played Schubert’s Piano Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960. The two grandest piano sonatas expressed death and life. The Beethoven Sonata was in two movements. This work had internal movements; nothing was superficial. It was taking the inward breath and stopped for the body’s organs to realize that they are together, synchronized. They will go together when the music they make is dissonant. It is the time for this strength although it will exit as a whole.

Schubert’s Sonata lives in many characterizations. He was happy to play his works for friends at the Schubertiades. His great music beauty and the thoughts of his songs; we wish it will go on. The trills are not there for something amusing; they can let the trills become signals. Schubert also wrote dances; he made the dances full of joy. When the music becomes energetic and builds more and more Schubert-like and faster, I feel him swirling into the sky. I see it.

This performance was magnificent, moving, and tells us to listen to what they tell us of life and death. Perhaps the audience knows it is Beethoven and Schubert who express their knowing, maybe not the rest of us. The audience brought Ms Grimaud to many bows. She gave the audience two encores: Debussy’s La Cathedrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral). The audience would not let her go so she played Rachmaninoff, Etude-Tableau, Op.33, No. 3 in C minor.

If you want to hear the concert in Davies Symphony Hall, you might take a tour. The wonderful Cage Ames, music critic “back East,” sent me Grimaud’s US touring schedule.  11/16 Univ. of Georgia, 11/22 Baltimore, 12/2 Carnegie Hall, 12/6 STANFORD, 12/9 LA, 12/14 Santa Barbara.