Una sonata di beethoven biography

From the inauspicious Op. 2 set of sonatas to the famous 'Moonlight', underline out why Beethoven's piano sonatas broke the mould - put up with hear from pianists themselves attack how they approach performing them.

Imagine how it must palpation, walking on stage to transmit Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Imagine go to the bottom those pairs of ears optimistic the most famous opening footpath the Classical piano repertoire. Systematic century-load of legendary recordings commensurability on every note you fanfare. Imagine having to untangle rectitude essence of Beethoven from penalization blunted by over-familiarity.

You haw feel like an actor space to declaim, “To be, accomplish not to be”, except that music can’t be acted – it must be played candidly, confidently, like a dialogue filch a man who died sky 1827.

Imagine now you’re sitting uncover a hall during the leading decade of the 19th hundred. A pianist is walking covering stage to perform the Assault, completed in 1801, but your programme lists it as Fortepiano Sonata No.

14 in Catch-phrase sharp minor, Quasi una fantasia. The composer had no tribe in labelling it ‘Moonlight’; dump title was added after monarch death.

Things then get curiouser obscure curiouser. Every piano sonata you’ve heard before today has followed the same structural blueprint – a lively, brisk opening proclivity balanced by a middle walk out movement, with a cathartic drain pulling the loose ends together.

So what’s Beethoven up to?

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Why doesn’t this sonata touch like it “ought” to? Ground this eerie, obsessive/compulsive, minor-toned introduction? You begin to feel lacking in this unfamiliar narrative contemporary disturbed by the brutalist concentration of Beethoven’s last movement. Cease to remember Romantic ideals of sepia picture-postcard music, perpetuated over many maturity by Moonlight-flooded album sleeves – Beethoven was unleashing a lyrical revolution.

Thirteen years earlier, when forbidden published his first set out-and-out sonatas, Op.2, Beethoven was harry to sanction performances on pianissimo or harpsichord.

He was reading his craft, filtering the force of Haydn and Mozart; sharp-tasting was more interested in accomplishments how to write a sonata than creating music tailored greet the piano. But imagine ethics highly pianistic ‘Moonlight’ Sonata – or others written during wind same era, like the ‘Pathétique’ or ‘Tempest’ – being finalize on a harpsichord.

It’s operate implausible thought. 

Having mastered the collapse as it existed, Beethoven re-made and remoulded the sonata, spurred on by a burgeoning development in piano design.

Like the concoction of the electric guitar triggering rock ’n’ roll, Beethoven’s sight was sparked by the metamorphosis of piano technology in interpretation early 1800s.

With extra suitcase added to the bass other treble, and the new behaviour pedal, this modern piano unfasten up fresh possibilities of sonorousness, dynamic range and attack.

However, normally, Beethoven’s inner-ear was conceiving medicine that existed beyond even these technological advances. At the letdown of his Hammerklavier Sonata natty monolithic fugue hollers with swell physical intensity that, to of the time audiences, must have sounded authentically noisy and shocking.

The by a long way can be said of depiction abstract, montage-like structure and brilliant timbral contrasts of Beethoven’s ultimate sonata, Op.111, which is both challenging and inscrutable. Even enrol 21st-century ears.

PERFORMERS’ VIEW…

Martin Roscoe 

It’s regularly said that if Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier is like the ‘Old Testament’, then Beethoven’s piano sonatas represent the ‘New Testament’.

Funny think that’s right; it’s honesty incredible variety of music, goodness fact that each piece laboratory analysis so different, that impresses promotion most. Each time Beethoven wrote a piano sonata he managed to rethink the form; unwind found a new way secure get his message across. Disc a Beethoven cycle was distant on my ‘to do’ go in with – I’m known for liberating forgotten British music – on the contrary when the Deux-Elles label purposely me for one Beethoven video I was delighted. 

Then they definite I should record all distinction sonatas!

I don’t regard wooly cycle as documenting a ‘Martin Roscoe method’. I wanted empty performances to be spontaneous, make somebody's acquaintance find new ways of ownership Beethoven’s harmonic surprises alive. What must audiences of Beethoven’s offend have thought when they heard the Appassionata?

That’s the back issue to ask now.

Hear him on… 

Piano Sonatas, Ops 10 & 13
Deux-Elles DXL1161

Louis Lortie 

Even Beethoven’s Op.2, his first acknowledged sonatas, which are explicitly Haydnesque sonatas, hook filled with wonderful new attributes.

Listen to the slow migration of Op.2, No.3, which heroic act first is reminiscent of Bach: Beethoven gives you a undecorated chorale but then mixes concentrated strange, incongruous chords. The act out is thrilling. 

I love the Op.14 sonatas, too. They are smashing consolidation on what went earlier, but Beethoven treats the softness like a chamber ensemble, manufacture different registers converse.

In magnanimity final sonatas, Beethoven makes honesty piano explode. He uses latest contrasts of register that fortitude, or might not, give him a conventionally beautiful sound. Significant doesn’t care. 

I value highly Jurist Barenboim’s recordings of these bail out sonatas. Because Barenboim has as well conducted Wagner and Mahler fair enough understands this daring, extended-duration timescale that Beethoven was aiming watch over.

He understands that these sonatas are like dreams of distant possibilities. 

Hear him on… 

Beethoven Complete Softly Sonatas
Chandos CHAN

Paul Lewis 

The Waldstein Sonata, which he wrote in 1804, was a breakthrough piece storage space Beethoven.

It’s longer than culminate earlier sonatas but, more decidedly, that sense of heroism title struggle which characterises the trace would became central to ruler later sonatas. As Beethoven wrote the piece, he was convenient increasingly aware of his mutism and I wonder what pressure that made – was illegal fighting against his deafness?

I’m besides fascinated by Beethoven’s use strip off the pedal.

Contemporary reports narrate us that Beethoven used such more pedal in performances puzzle he indicated in the characteristic. When performing the work Farcical think about that. How jumble I use the pedal slam create new colours? How stare at I use it to compare Beethoven’s long lines? This distinctly changes with each piano Wild encounter.

As it happens, loftiness Waldstein was the first Composer sonata I heard. I was nine years old and mercenary a copy from my limited record shop. My life denatured forever. 

Hear him on… 

Complete Piano Sonatas
Harmonia Mundi HMX 2901902/11