Beethoven Appassionata Piano Sonata, Op.57

[jayne lee wilson]

BEETHOVEN OP.57
Olga Paschenko, Qobuz Studio, Alpha 24/88.2. Rec. 2016.

You want sensational virtuosity and volatility, extremes of control and confrontation, one of Beethoven’s greatest challenges to the listener presented as the physical and emotional self-examination it surely must have been to create…..?

....It’s all here……
Olga Pashchenko….on an Original Conrad Graf Piano of 1824 at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn.

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/beethoven-piano-sonatas-21-23-26-olga-pashchenko/3760014193651

(credit not me, but a tip-off from a little bird… a Mistle Thrush by another name… whom I thank for this transformative discovery…
come back soon little bird, alight on my shoulder, whisper songs in my ear, and we shall Promenade together...)

[Sir Velo]

BEETHOVEN OP.57
Olga Paschenko, Qobuz Studio, Alpha 24/88.2. Rec. 2016.

You want sensational virtuosity and volatility, extremes of control and confrontation, one of Beethoven’s greatest challenges to the listener presented as the physical and emotional self-examination it surely must have been to create…..?

....It’s all here……
Olga Pashchenko….on an Original Conrad Graf Piano of 1824 at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn.

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/beethoven-piano-sonatas-21-23-26-olga-pashchenko/3760014193651

(credit not me, but a tip-off from a little bird… a Mistle Thrush by another name… whom I thank for this transformative discovery…
come back soon little bird, alight on my shoulder, whisper songs in my ear, and we shall Promenade together...)

Has Ronald Brautigam been mentioned yet? His 2005 recording allows one to experience this work as closely to how Beethoven would have heard it, in a performance of towering virtuosity.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

What is your favorite recording, Allie?

Oops, sorry! I didn't realise you were addressing me.

I have only Gulda and Gilels, both of whom play it far better than I ever could. But I still find it more rewarding to play it than to listen to someone else doing the same (better).

[richardfinegold]

Has Ronald Brautigam been mentioned yet? His 2005 recording allows one to experience this work as closely to how Beethoven would have heard it, in a performance of towering virtuosity.

I mentioned at least once in this thread. I played it again yesterday. Beside being my only fortepiano recording it is my only SACD version. I agree with your assessment and will put in a good word for the recording balance as well. Sometimes fortepiano recordings capture to much of the noisy mechanism of the instrument and lack the kind of perspective that a concert hall seat offers, but not here. And having now listened to many versions of this piece in the last week, that problem isn’t confined to fortepianos. DG fails to capture Pollini full dynamic range and appears to have closely miked him. Richter on Decca, a live effort, is realistic sounding, not always a given in his live efforts.
Next up: Rudolf Serkin

[jayne lee wilson]

Once in a while you come across a piece, or a performer, that is so exceptional you can't find superlatives enough & and you just have to tell the world about it...... so it is with Olga Pashchenko, whose Beethoven "Variations" album I listend to earlier, after another stunned and stunning experience of her Op.53, 57, 81a....

Self-evidently, she has a startlingly instinctive connection with Beethoven's sonic and imaginative world. And gets an astonishing range of colour and attack from whichever fortepiano she plays, having been devoted to such performance practice from early on. Just listen, rapt, to the the extraordinarily evocative bass halo around the higher registers toward the end of the WoO 80 C minor variations (after ca.9'30). It sounds astonishingly new.

The Girls Got Gifts.....
Effortlessly in command, communicating the fateful struggle...

She's advanced the state-of-the-Appassionata-art(**) .....and no lover of this music can possibly ignore her....
Go listen any which way you can....

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/interpreter/olga-pashchenko/download-streaming-albums

(**) Yes I do include Brautigam in that now utterly changed perspective.... compare him with Pashchenko in the Andante (always one of my from-the-heart-to-the-heart LvB pieces) ... it may surprise you who is the more expressive and considered....
As for mechanistic audibility, especially towards the end, for me that only enhances Beethoven's humanity and extremity, the pushing against the boundaries in music that should never sound anything like comfortable. Part of the musical process, but Pashchenko's technical skill and virtuosity, and the fineness of the Erard itself, ensures that this never offers any baffle to tone-production.

(Anyway gotta concentrate on the Cricket now .... under gloomy skies, getting a bit tense out there...!)

[rauschwerk]

Yes I do include Brautigam in that now utterly changed perspective.... compare him with Pashchenko in the Andante (always one of my from-the-heart-to-the-heart LvB pieces) ... it may surprise you who is the more expressive and considered....

I'm sure Brautigam is enough of an artist to play the variations with any amount of expression - surely he chooses to play them in that cool manner for good reasons.

I have had his cycle on my shelves for a few years but had not heard Op. 57 until today. It seems to me that he is portraying an oasis of calm between outbursts of unprecedented emotional turmoil. His restrained approach makes the interrupted cadence at the end of the movement all the more disturbing. I'm not a great fan of early pianos but I do admire Brautigam in Beethoven. To my ears there is just one place in this sonata where music almost be comes noise, and that is the coda of the first movement.

[jayne lee wilson]

Well, of course a given artist chooses to play a musical work a certain way for their own reasons.... and while the slow movement of the appassionata is undoubtedly an "oasis of calm between outbursts of unprecedented emotional turmoil", it some readings it can offer more than that.

Olga Pashchenko really has something very special to offer in this music... she finds more in this work than most others I've heard; in the andante, a greater range of colour, phrase and mood; her subtlety and delicacy here is remarkable. Then the transition into the finale is at first almost ghostly, then shockingly contrasted - as it surely should be. The bass registers of the Graf are very evocative here, encompassing warmth, clarity and a distinctive poetical cloudiness according to pedal applied or withheld.

Add to all of that Pashchenko's note-perfect articulacy and virtuosity and you have a very potent musical alchemy.

So if you admire Brautigam's Beethoven you should really try to hear Pashchenko....All I'm trying to do is inspire others to listen to this marvellous young artist for themselves....
I hope they find her Beethoven as exceptional, as transformative, as I have....

[richardfinegold]

Well, of course a given artist chooses to play a musical work a certain way for their own reasons.... and while the slow movement of the appassionata is undoubtedly an "oasis of calm between outbursts of unprecedented emotional turmoil", it some readings it can offer more than that.

Olga Pashchenko really has something very special to offer in this music... she finds more in this work than most others I've heard; in the andante, a greater range of colour, phrase and mood; her subtlety and delicacy here is remarkable. Then the transition into the finale is at first almost ghostly, then shockingly contrasted - as it surely should be. The bass registers of the Erard are very evocative here, encompassing warmth, clarity and a distinctive poetical cloudiness according to pedal applied or withheld.

Add to all of that Pashchenko's note-perfect articulacy and virtuosity and you have a very potent musical alchemy.

So if you admire Brautigam's Beethoven you should really try to hear Pashchenko....All I'm trying to do is inspire others to listen to this marvellous young artist for themselves....
I hope they find her Beethoven as exceptional, as transformative, as I have....

I just had a listen and she does live up to your praise. I do like the way she plays the first half of the andante poker faced and then lets us feel as if the passion is going to blow the becalmed ship out of the water in the second half. The finale has a proper sense of menace and struggle. I still feel that the limitations of the fortepiano handcuff her a bit, and would keep her out of the top rung for only that reason, but you are I not going to reach consensus here. Still, a very satisfying account, and I will return to it later. Right now I need a break from the work

[jayne lee wilson]

I just had a listen and she does live up to your praise. I do like the way she plays the first half of the andante poker faced and then lets us feel as if the passion is going to blow the becalmed ship out of the water in the second half. The finale has a proper sense of menace and struggle. I still feel that the limitations of the fortepiano handcuff her a bit, and would keep her out of the top rung for only that reason, but you are I not going to reach consensus here. Still, a very satisfying account, and I will return to it later. Right now I need a break from the work

A very heartening response rfg, thank you so much for it....

If you can take just a little more Beethoven at least, do listen to Pashchenko's Variations album - the C Minor work gets the performance of its life on there, and it is a different instrument too (Christopher Clarke copy of an 1818 Fritz), perhaps an even finer-sounding one than the Conrad Graf used for the Sonatas.

But I'm so glad you took the trouble for a close listen to this extraordinary Op.57, and responded so positively! That's great.

[richardfinegold]

A very heartening response rfg, thank you so much for it....

If you can take just a little more Beethoven at least, do listen to Pashchenko's Variations album - the C Minor work gets the performance of its life on there, and it is a different instrument too (Christopher Clarke copy of an 1818 Fritz), perhaps an even finer-sounding one than the Conrad Graf used for the Sonatas.

But I'm so glad you took the trouble for a close listen to this extraordinary Op.57, and responded so positively! That's great.

Well I currently am enjoying some Gluck from Tafelmusick but I do have Pashchenko bookmarked in Qobuz and will probably get there in a few days. I read her bio on Wiki and see that she studied fortepiano and harpsichord with Richard Egarr

[Pulcinella]

This work falls squarely in one of my 'no go' zones (I know many of you will tell me what I'm missing: ).
The only version I have in my CD collection is a BBC MM release of an RFH performance by Claudio Arrau (liner notes slightly confusing about the date).
Might this performance convince me that it's a great work?
I do have the music to follow (a neighbour gave me an old edition of all the Beethoven sonatas when she had a clear-out recently!).

[richardfinegold]

Well, that is a pity, Pulci, it's always disappointing when someone whose taste I respect doesn't like something that for me is one of my core musical pleasures, but vive le difference.
I had purchased the same BBC Music issue that you reference and burned the disc. At the time I compared it to the Arrau studio account and thought that the differences were minor. The studio account is better recorded, the live account compensates with a slight jolt in energy. Arrau is great at building and releasing tension and his sonorities will be anathema if you prefer fortepianos but I find thrilling. He doesn't have the leonine qualities of Pollini, Richter, or Pianist that Jane and I have been discussing above.

[Pulcinella]

Well, that is a pity, Pulci, it's always disappointing when someone whose taste I respect doesn't like something that for me is one of my core musical pleasures, but vive le difference.
I had purchased the same BBC Music issue that you reference and burned the disc. At the time I compared it to the Arrau studio account and thought that the differences were minor. The studio account is better recorded, the live account compensates with a slight jolt in energy. Arrau is great at building and releasing tension and his sonorities will be anathema if you prefer fortepianos but I find thrilling. He doesn't have the leonine qualities of Pollini, Richter, or Pianist that Jane and I have been discussing above.

Thanks for your understanding, Richard, and your subsequent comments.
I think I must have been inoculated against certain composers and musical genres at birth!

But I've dug that CD out and will give it a spin sometime soon.

PS: And I certainly DON'T prefer fortepianos!

[Bryn]

. . . PS: And I certainly DON'T prefer fortepianos!

I suppose your chosen screen name is a bit of a giveaway. Misidentified and modernised older music your bag, eh?

[Pulcinella]

I suppose your chosen screen name is a bit of a giveaway. Misidentified and modernised older music your bag, eh?

Well, it does combine the two periods of music I most enjoy, that's true.