Beethoven's last piano sonata. Op.111

[ahinton]

For me, this sonata is probably in the Top 1 of all music I know, words are inadequate to describe its transcendental and liberating power. Perhaps Busoni came closest when he talked of the destiny of music: "the day of its freedom will come. - When it shall cease to be 'musical' [musicalisch]".

Busoni - yes - and his own day has been rather a long time coming, n'est-ce pas?...

[Tapiola]

Busoni - yes - and his own day has been rather a long time coming, n'est-ce pas?...

Mais oui! (I am reminded, inescapably, of the end of Doktor Faust, when the naked youth rises - following Faust's death and transference of his life force to the child - with the living branch in his hands...)

[Bryn]

I rather enjoyed his approach, thanks for posting it.

Yes, I was rather taken with it when it was first drawn to my attention some time ago. Rzewski takes a similarly improvisatory approach when playing Cardew's variations on the 1934 "Thalmann Song" and Cardew's own "We Sing for the Future". No two Rzewski performances of the latter work in particular will have quite the same notes quite same order, and the variations benefit significantly from that approach, as far as I am concerned.

[Bryn]

I can't find my copy of the last Stravinsky/Craft conversation book Themes & Conclusions - but I think the "boogie-woogie" comment originates there. It has been repeated oft-since.

Stravinsky certainly, and Jeremy Denk makes great play of the association in his notes for his recording of Op.111 and a selection of Ligeti Etudes.

Schiff takes a rather different view:

[kea]

I remember Komen as being not at all bad, though I haven't listened to his recordings for years and there must be a reason for that, and Badura-Skoda's technique is not quite all it could be. I don't know the others.

same @ both of these incidentally, although I very much like Badura-Skoda's instrument and find his moments of technical overreach relatable >_>

Re the others: Peter Serkin is good, although with somewhat of a sense of a period instrument played in modern style, and also recorded in a much too wet acoustic. He is on the slow side in the second movement, as is his wont—and slow tempi are much more noticeable on a Graf—but by no means overly reverential. I like him a lot as a MI pianist so if you're also in that category you will enjoy his performance.

Brautigam is fine, not exceptional, for most of the performance. Towards the end of the variations he did build up to a successful luminous climax that made me re-evaluate the rest of his performance, but I still can't rate it as much more than pretty good as a whole. Good technique though.

Penelope Crawford also fine, somewhat more beautiful than Brautigam and slightly more characterful. Piano is a bit more "modern-sounding" though I imagine it's a period-appropriate reproduction. Some people may love this performance—it's somewhat middle of the road, more HIP-influenced than actually HIP, and well made enough that an appropriately inclined listener might find it very moving. Doesn't push my buttons though.

Alexei Lubimov was for me something different and commanded my attention from the first notes. I may rate his recording my favourite of Op. 111 on any instrument, but I'm not sure. (He personalises the work quite a bit, but for me it never sounds like that, basically more just... natural.) Plays a very nice piano from the year after Beethoven's death, so not exactly contemporary with the sonatas.

These impressions are somewhat outdated although I did listen to a couple of excerpts of all of these to refresh my memory. (Can't find Binns to stream it. Streaming services do offer performances by Tom Beghin and Olga Pashchenko which I'll listen to eventually.)

[vinteuil]

Peter Serkin ..... I like him a lot as a MI pianist so if you're also in that category you will enjoy his performance.y.)

... is this " Modern Instrument " ?

Not an abbreviation I had encountered before... :exasperation at people using unexpected abbreviations emoticon:

... or perhaps :EAPUUAE:

.

[Richard Barrett]

I very much like Badura-Skoda's instrument and find his moments of technical overreach relatable >_>

Indeed. Thanks for that round-up, that'll give me something to get started with when I have the space to think about this piece again.

I do like Peter Serkin as a HUP* performer so I will certainly give that one a go.


* (just for you EA!)

[ahinton]

Mais oui! (I am reminded, inescapably, of the end of Doktor Faust, when the naked youth rises - following Faust's death and transference of his life force to the child - with the living branch in his hands...)

Quite - though whether the Jarnach ending, the Beaumont ending or the sadly still under wraps Stevenson ending raises something of a question mark over this!

[ahinton]

Stravinsky certainly, and Jeremy Denk makes great play of the association in his notes for his recording of Op.111 and a selection of Ligeti Etudes.

Schiff takes a rather different view:

But despite his rather giveaway admission that hs dislikes boogie-woogie anyway, I think that Schiff might not be so wide of the mark in implying that such an association in some people's minds might more likely result from a conscious or subconscious grafting of the long-post-Beethoven experience of boogie-woogie than from some kind of visionary prescience on the composer's part, not least beause of the context in which he places that variation.

Wiki states that
"Performance practice today often makes the theme and first variation slow, with wide spaces between the chords, and lets the third variation, which has a powerful, stomping, dance-like character with falling 32-part notes, come out much faster and with heavy syncopation. Mitsuko Uchida has remarked that this variation, to a modern ear, has a striking resemblance to cheerful boogie-woogie, and the closeness of it to jazz and ragtime, which were still eighty years into the future at the time, has often been pointed out. Jeremy Denk, for example, describes the second movement using terms like "proto-jazz" and "boogie-woogie"".
This appears to take insufficient account either of (a) the fact that some pianists like Schiff do not view, or play, that third variation as though it marks, or is intended to mark, some kind of radical departure from the prevailing mood of the music up to that point or (b) that the very idea of "proto-jazz" and "boogie-woogie" might seem somewhat undermined by the performance of the sonata on an instrument of the composer's own time. Whatever Uchida says of this (and there's no reason to doubt her insofar as her observation goes), the association would seem to be no more than coincidental, though Beethoven himself might at least have been amused by the thought of it!

Chuck Berry to LvB: Roll over, Beethoven!
LvB to Chuck Berry: I already did; didn't you notice?!

Coat's on...

[Tapiola]

Quite - though whether the Jarnach ending, the Beaumont ending or the sadly still under wraps Stevenson ending raises something of a question mark over this!

Very true. Straying (continuing) off-topic, I remember, as a student, playing the last scene of the Jarnach completion on my hifi, in the downstairs lounge of my shared digs, at considerable volume, when my flatmate (a good friend but poor unmusical soul (his favourite band was the Scottish outfit Big Country!)) came down the stairs and told me that this was the "weirdest" music he had ever heard (and I had at that point previously subjected him to Berio (Sinfonia), middle period Ligeti, expressionist Schoenberg...).

[ahinton]

Very true. Straying (continuing) off-topic, I remember, as a student, playing the last scene of the Jarnach completion on my hifi, in the downstairs lounge of my shared digs, at considerable volume, when my flatmate (a good friend but poor unmusical soul (his favourite band was the Scottish outfit Big Country!)) came down the stairs and told me that this was the "weirdest" music he had ever heard (and I had at that point previously subjected him to Berio (Sinfonia), middle period Ligeti, expressionist Schoenberg...).

Interesting indeed! I do, though, wish that Busoni could have survived to complete that work on which he laboured on and off for so very long, thereby casting aside all doubts as to how it should end.

[Tapiola]

Interesting indeed! I do, though, wish that Busoni could have survived to complete that work on which he laboured on and off for so very long, thereby casting aside all doubts as to how it should end.

Absolutely. I'm reminded also of the (to date) sad fate of Schnittke's Faust opera, which currently languishes as an expurgated and unsatisfying torso in its sole recorded incarnation under the baton of Gerd Albrecht with the Hamburg Opera. No argument over the ending here (the Faust Cantata had been written a decade before the first two acts were composed): just what happens in the middle...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Stravinsky certainly, and Jeremy Denk makes great play of the association in his notes for his recording of Op.111 and a selection of Ligeti Etudes.

I also discovered this:

http://jeremydenk.net/blog/2005/10/24/regrets-and-bumps/

[Tapiola]

I also discovered this:

http://jeremydenk.net/blog/2005/10/2...ets-and-bumps/

Fascinating article, fhg. I always like to read what the insightful Denk has to say. He talks of hiccups and bumps, and that unison E in the theme before the A minor section. I have always thought of the Arietta as some kind of "supplication" after the raging first movement. In these terms, the hesitancy in the transition to the relative minor makes perfect sense to me - the sinner (cf Heileger Dankgesang) talking to God as a sinner would, without perfect articulation, with latent doubt, with human imperfection and some frailty. This movement is very different in terms of its "continuity" to that of op 109, which is quite disjunct in terms of its variation arrangement. Op 111 Arietta IS more continuous, but to me, subject to this element of the human addressing The Divine, with its attendant doubts, anxieties and human imperfections.

Just my tuppence worth.

In saying that, I have just listened to Kempff's 1935 recording, with great expectation and a certain disappointment. The Allegro is underpowered and four square to these ears; the Arietta wayward in tempo and distinctly earthbound... The whole lacks coherence, to me. Unfortunately, my least favourite rendition of the versions I know.

[BBMmk2]

#34 Bryn etc....

Although there are similarities to the "boogie-woogie" and "ragtime" with the op.111 sonata and I really do think, that despite my modern ears looking back over the years can see what's transpiring as well, I do think, (and this is my own opinion, that J S Bach, probably unwittingly was the precursor o jazz, I say this because of all the music, like the Prelude & Fugue in Eb, BWV552, St Ann, for example. The syncopations that JSB employs and the rather florid soloistic lines as well, etc...