beethoven's 32 piano sonatas robert silverman - Music on Main

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Sonata No. 22 in F Major, Op. 54 composed 1804, published 1806 What are we to make of this curious, unassuming work that separates the heroic Waldstein and Appassionata Sonatas? Should we read anything into its lack of a dedication, seemingly a wasted opportunity for one of the more politically astute composers in history? Is it an indication that Beethoven realized that it hadn’t quite come off? Could he have intended it as a heavy-handed burlesque of less talented composers’ efforts, along the lines of Mozart’s <strong>Music</strong>al Joke, or perhaps even his own eighth symphony? Or should we cast our votes with pianists Edwin Fischer and Alfred Brendel, both of whom have written that it is an important work (without really explaining why)? The truth probably lies somewhere within all these assertions. In this sonata, Beethoven explored a number of radical techniques for the first time, while disguising the sonata’s experimental nature with the use of humour, so as to deflect any criticism of the piece. In the opening movement Beethoven attempts a juxtaposition and ultimate reconciliation of two diametrically opposing ideas: an elegant, gentle minuet and a crude, heavily accented octave exercise. The minuet occurs three times, becoming increasingly ornate with each repetition, finally dissolving into trills. Interspersed are the two octave passages. They begin similarly, but partway through the second of these, Beethoven suddenly breaks off, as though he realizes that this experiment simply is not working, and returns to the minuet. He becomes contrite in the coda when, as though to atone for his sins, he delivers the movement’s finest music. In the second movement we find the composer experimenting with structure. The thematic material, admittedly, can be shoe-horned into some kind of sonata form, but with the proportions of each section totally askew: The opening exposition is only 3 lines long, while the remainder of the movement occupies more than five pages. Furthermore, the imbalance is magnified because Beethoven specifically indicates that the lengthy second section be repeated. Perceptually, the effect is one of the composer leading us all over the map for several minutes, at a hypnotic pace that according to Donald Tovey, nothing can hurry and nothing can stop. Finally, Beethoven decides that enough is enough, and races us for the concluding double bar, leaving us all out of breath when we arrive there. The laugh is on us! Some of the techniques he first explored here would be repeated with more notable success in subsequent keyboard works. The progressively increasing decorativeness in each repetition of the minuet can also be heard in both the slow movement of Op. 57 and the final variation of the third movement of Op. 109. The juxtaposition of two seemingly incompatible ideas in the opening movement of Op. 54 is again worked out in the first movement of Op. 109. Finally, Beethoven was sufficiently satisfied with the finale that he immediately used a similar in his very next <strong>piano</strong> sonata, the Appassionata, both with respect to the tempo and asymmetrical ground plan. <strong>Music</strong> on Main presents Silverman plays Beethoven. September 27, 2010 – April 5, 2011 at the Cellar Restaurant & Jazz Club. www.musiconmain.ca Programme notes by Robert Silverman. © Robert Silverman
Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57 “Appassionata” composed 1804-5, published 1807 “I confess the reasons for the so-called Appassionata Sonata’s popularity elude me. At this period of his life Beethoven was not only preoccupied with motivic frugality. He was also preoccupied with being Beethoven… his conceit at this period was to create mammoth structures from material that in lesser hands would scarcely have afforded a good sixteen-bar intro. And there is about the Appassionata an egoistic pomposity, a defiant ‘let's see if I can't get away with using that tune once more,’ attitude, that on my own private Beethoven poll places this sonata somewhere between the King Stephen Overture and the Wellington's Victory Symphony.” No, this quote is not another post-modern attempt by a proponent of the "new musicology" to cut Beethoven down to size. Rather, it is from programme notes Glenn Gould wrote three decades ago for his own recording of the piece. That performance elicited from critic Harris Goldsmith the remark that Gould’s interpretation represented an act of "deliberate sabotage." (This was one of the more charitable comments that greeted that particular release.) Yet, Gould did have a point. He recognized that for all the Appassionata’s drama and presti-digitational demands, the harmonic motion is slow, and there is less contrapuntal complexity than we find in his earlier or later <strong>sonatas</strong>. However, he was judging this piece strictly from the vantagepoint of an obsessed imitative contrapuntist. He demonstrably had little sympathy for Beethoven’s extraordinary achievement of creating as epic a work as had yet been written for the <strong>piano</strong>, one that used sound and texture rather than melody, and with every aspect of the sonata’s architecture contributing to its inner drama. The sonata begins with an arpeggiated theme in F minor. It is immediately repeated, but now in the key of G flat. This sets into motion a struggle between the all-important note C, a fundamental part of the F minor chord, and a less crucial note in that key, D flat. The standard tensions of themes and keys inherent in the most first movements are still present; however, the C - D flat dichotomy also persists throughout the movement (and indeed, the entire sonata) and even overwhelms the music at its most climactic points: the end of the Development and the Coda. In the middle of his career, Beethoven seemed to avoid writing the extended slow movements he delighted in composing both earlier and later. Many of these middle movement, like the Appassionata’s, serve primarily as a welcome pause between the weightier outer movements. The second movement is a set of variations (set in D flat major) whose main theme contains no fewer than five iterations of the motif D flat - C - D flat. The theme, essentially a series of chords, remains constant, but becomes increasingly embellished in each of the three variations. Finally, the original theme is re-stated. This time, though, each phrase sounds in a different register, thereby revealing inner dialogues that were hidden the first time around. Suddenly, the movement is harshly interrupted (by a chord whose top note is none other than D flat), and the finale follows without a pause. It is characteristic of another aspect of Beethoven’s middle-period keyboard style: of the nine <strong>sonatas</strong> written between Opus 26 and 57, seven of their finales, including this one, feature perpetual-motion patterns from start to finish. The highest notes of the principal motif are, almost predictably, C and D flat. The tempo marking is Allegro ma non troppo. Of course, that only serves as a challenge for some pianists to play the movement from beginning to end as troppo as possible, so as to demonstrate conclusively how much better they know than Beethoven about how his music is to be performed. As with the opening movement, the repetition of the Exposition is omitted. How bizarre, then, that Beethoven specifically and unusually directs that the much longer development and recapitulation be repeated! Many musicians question the advisability of following this marking, and I must confess that, before performing the piece I also had decided that the sonata’s greatness might best be served by ignoring the repeat sign. However, the first time I played it in public, the choice was literally taken out of my hands. I simply could not go forward at this point, and played the piece as written. As always, Beethoven is right. The repetition may admittedly be superfluous if only the last movement is played, but when one performs the entire sonata, the finale demands the length Beethoven assigned it, if for no other reason than to counterbalance the weight and force of the opening movement. <strong>Music</strong> on Main presents Silverman plays Beethoven. September 27, 2010 – April 5, 2011 at the Cellar Restaurant & Jazz Club. www.musiconmain.ca Programme notes by Robert Silverman. © Robert Silverman
Page 1 and 2: Programme notes BEETHOVEN’S <stro
Page 3 and 4: Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 2/2 co
Page 5 and 6: Sonata No. 4 in E flat, Op. 7 compo
Page 7 and 8: Sonata No. 6 in F Major, Op. 10/2 c
Page 9 and 10: Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13 “
Page 11 and 12: Sonata No. 10 in G Major, Op. 14/2
Page 13 and 14: Sonata No. 12 in A flat Major, Op.
Page 15 and 16: Sonata No. 14 “quasi una Fantasia
Page 17 and 18: Sonata No. 16 in G Major, Op. 31/1
Page 19 and 20: Sonata No. 18 in E flat Major, Op.
Page 21: Sonata No. 21 in C, Op. 53 “Walds
Page 25 and 26: Sonata No. 25 in G Major, Op. 79 co
Page 27 and 28: Sonata No. 27 in E minor, Op. 90 co
Page 29 and 30: Sonata No. 29 in B-flat Major, Op.
Page 31 and 32: Sonata No. 30 in E Major, Op. 109 c
Page 33: Sonata No. 32 in C

beethoven's 32 piano sonatas robert silverman - Music on Main

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