Sir Andras Schiff and his piano are brightly lit on a small circular stage surrounded by rising tiers of seats that seem to be occupied by men and women, but the audience is hard to make out, obscure. He begins to play Bach’s Third Partita in A minor. The opening movement, the Fantasia, says directly but respectfully: be alert, there are things going on that bear close watching. The seats are still in shadow. My thoughts turn dark. Can these surroundings be trusted with the music? They are a fungal mycelium that will slowly descend and cover the stage, the man, the black piano. Andras completes the long Fantasia and continues to the Allemande. His face seems untroubled, but he may be a captive, forced to play endlessly as punishment for some unknown crime. Or he may be playing desperately to protect himself: it keeps the fungi at bay, immobilizes them. Or else the audience is a faculty of biologists observing a long and complex mating ritual. The pianist is the male, and the much larger female is the piano. Such extreme sexual dimorphisms are rare but known to science. The piano will become pregnant and in six weeks’ time will give birth to thousands of young, of which a small number are human males and the rest asexual drones resembling small saxophones. The pianist dies after the performance. But Andras is intact and moves on to the Corrente. I’m heartened by the themes’ subtle recurrence from one movement to the next. Maybe these are real people in the auditorium, being nourished by Schiff’s channeling of the master. Perhaps they are redeemable, maybe even this increasingly fungal world is redeemable. Andras moves through the gracious Sarabande. His eyes are shining. The Burlesca, the Scherzo, the final Gigue. He rises from his stool. Those occupying the chairs begin to get up as the lights come on. Clearly they are people. They applaud. A few seem to have tears on their cheeks. They bend toward each other holding coats and scarves. Andras bows. I’m just the messenger, he seems to say.