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

tonic B-flat. The first editions are explicit, but controversy exists nonetheless, partially because a sketch in
Beethoven’s hand indicates a more conventional A-natural. More importantly, the music sounds extraordinarily
strange as printed, even to late 20 th century ears. Pianist Alfred Brendel believes that an A-sharp robs the
recapitulation of a sense of triumph, and that the natural is therefore correct. I agree with Brendel’s
observations, but not his conclusions. Throughout his career, Beethoven often went out of his way to deemphasize
the moment when the main theme returns. This is particularly true in the Hammerklavier, where
the left-hand accompaniment ensures that the power of the sonata’s opening cannot possibly be duplicated in
the recapitulation. (He is setting up the important B minor shock just ahead.) Since the A-sharp eliminates the
dominant-tonic progression leading up to the recapitulation, one of this sonata’s fundamental goals is achieved
by playing the music as printed. 10
Very few compositions in the canon of Western music start or conclude as tragically as the slow movement,
but elsewhere, vastly different states of mind are evoked. Beethoven indicates at the outset that the entire
movement is to be played Appassionata e con molto sentimento, and subsequently directs that certain sections
be performed espressivo, and on two occasions, con grand’ espressione. In other words, unlike the slow
movement of the Sonata Op. 10/3, this movement is not a depiction of uninterrupted desolation. Central to the
movement—cast in Sonata form with an expansive coda—is an extended passage where descending thirds are
chained together melodically. The resemblance to the opening of Brahms’ fourth symphony can hardly be
called a coincidence. Elsewhere, there are moments where embellishments in the right hand sound uncannily
like those found in Chopin nocturnes.
It is only in the final movement that traditional sonata procedure is abandoned. As in the Finale of the
composer’s ninth symphony, the composer begins by searching for an appropriate conclusion to the work. A
slow, introspective, seemingly rhythm-less series of descending thirds in the bass voice is heard, sounding
somewhat like the awakening from a deep slumber. The composer interrupts the process three times in order
to try out a new idea. (Of course, something similar happens in the ninth symphony, but there, Beethoven
auditions themes from previous movements. In the Hammerklavier, the material is always new and each idea
is faster and more contrapuntal than the preceding one.) Suddenly, he hits upon the idea of ending the sonata
with a fugue. He is elated: those chained thirds become faster, louder, and more excited. Then he calms down,
and the fugue itself begins. Beethoven had included fugal sections in several of his earlier works, but writing a
fugue as an entire movement was new for him. And what a weird, grotesque fugue it is! Not only does it begin
with a trill, which ordinarily is a concluding ornament, but in sharp contrast to greatest fugues of the Baroque
masters, it uses every known manner of fugal writing—even the very rare technique of stating the theme
backwards (set in B Minor, B flat major's sinister alter ego) —instead of only one or two.
Finally, I offer without comment a quotation from a letter that Beethoven wrote to Ferdinand Ries, the pianist
who played the first London performance of this, his most complex and ingeniously structured sonata:
“Should the sonata not be suitable for London, I could send another one; or you could also omit the Largo and
begin straight away with the Fugue, which is the last movement; or you could use the first movement and then
the Adagio, and then for the third movement the Scherzo, and omit entirely No. 4. Or you could take just the
first movement and the Scherzo and let them form the whole sonata. I leave it to you to do as you think best.”
10 Perhaps Donald Tovey, the esteemed British musicologist, came closest to the truth in suggesting that Beethoven probably meant an A-natural, but would have been ecstatic had
anyone pointed out that he had actually written an A-sharp. (The passage in question, by the way, lasts two seconds at most. Nonetheless, its importance cannot be overstated.)
<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