More Late Sonatas

Sir Andras Schiff played the second (and last) of his recitals in Vancouver this year. The evening was an intense emotional experience – two massive works, Beethoven’s Op. 111 sonata and Schubert’s B-flat major sonata, D. 960 – and the experience left me spiritually elated, though physically drained.

The artist opened his concert with Haydn’s Sonata in E-flat major, Hob XVI:52, the first of his three “London” sonatas. Among the three sonatas, and even among Haydn’s other sonatas, this one is perhaps the largest in scope and in size. In his performance, Schiff’s taste and sense of timing, especially comic timing, were impeccable. The many rapid scale runs in the first movement, in mm. 9 to 10, mm. 17 to 19, for example, were like beautiful strings of pearl. Throughout the sonata, Schiff managed to convey the drama of the music while maintaining an incredible sense of lightness, and never pushing the instrument. The closing of the phrase at m. 26, I thought, was played especially beautifully and elegantly. I loved the sound he evoked with the clock-like theme at mm. 27 to 29, with the pairs of 32^nd and 16^th notes. The rapid 32^nd-note runs for the right hand at mm. 30 to 32 had a wonderful breathless quality and, again, a beguiling lightness. The pianist was masterful in his playing of two brief transitional passages, in the two measures (mm. 44 to 45) that introduce the development, and in the octave passage (mm. 109 to 110) that precede the coda/codetta, Schiff changed the mood and the colour of the music like a sorcerer.

I once again marveled at Schiff’s sense of timing in the Adagio, where he illuminated the beauty of the music for all of us to behold. The obsessive repeated notes that open the third movement, and the prevailing feeling of a wild chase, remind me of the finale of Beethoven’s Sonata in F major, Op. 10, No. 2. Here, Schiff really took us on a roller coaster ride (albeit a brief one) and realized to perfection the youthful and unbuttoned humour of an elderly Haydn.

For his final sonata, Beethoven returns to the key C minor, one that has such special meaning for him. I believe that in spite of its relative brevity, the Sonata in C minor, Op. 111, is one of the composer’s most intensely emotional works. In the opening of the 1^st movement, Schiff managed to immediately create a sense of gravity and massiveness. In the rapid 16^th-note runs at mm. 23 to 28, and in the rapid 16^th-note right hand broken chords with left hand octaves at mm. 58 to 61 (and again at mm. 132 to 138), Schiff really held back and played them quite deliberately, with great depth of sound, giving them a real sense of weight.

In the Arietta that followed, I felt that Schiff played the movement as one long breath, as we also held our breath until the last sounds evaporated. It was a cathartic experience to live through. Schiff’s interpretation of the work last night reminded me of incredible performance of this work by Claudio Arrau who, in the last movement, really took us into another realm. In the trills that dominated the final pages of this sonata, Schiff, like Arrau, also took us into the realm of spiritual communion with the composer.

I appreciated the intermission that followed the Beethoven, although I was wishing for a quiet place to prepare myself for the equally emotionally demanding second half. For the second half, Schiff gave us his view of Mozart’s Sonata in D major, K. 576. Beauty of sound was what struck me about this performance. I believe this is significant because Mozart, who is usually sparing with expressive markings in his score, wrote in this movement the word dolce, twice. Schiff’s shaping of the phrases was impeccable, especially at mm. 41 to 45 and at mm. 121 to 125, where there was palpable warmth emanating from the music. The pianist also made me aware of the contrapuntal intricacies of Mozart’s writing in this movement, especially in the beauty of the writing for the left hand. In the second movement, I especially appreciated the attention Schiff gave to the left hand accompaniment figures, where there was a feeling of weightlessness as well as an understated beauty. The artist’s playing of the concluding Allegretto was witty and charming. What particularly stayed with me was the theme in the left hand, with brief interjections by the right hand, at mm. 26 to 29, and again at mm. 117 to 120.

Schiff’s playing of Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960, overwhelmed me. After the opening chorale-like melody, the G-flat major theme was understated (Schubert did write pp, but most pianists play it more prominently), but the otherworldly beauty of this theme really shone through clearly. His pacing throughout the long movement was laudable, and the many pregnant pauses were charged with meaning.

If Schubert was touching death with the slow movement of the A major sonata, Schiff played on Sunday, the slow movement of this sonata must be death itself. The pianist did not play the opening like a dirge, acknowledging Schubert’s indications of andante as well as sostenuto. His voicing of the chords in the opening of the A major section was almost as if choirs of angels were descending from heaven to soothe us.

As if he didn’t want to abruptly dispel the mood of the slow movement, Schiff played the beginning of the scherzo with a true pianissimo. Again the pianist was mindful of Schubert’s indication of con delicatezza. In the fourth movement, I appreciate Schiff’s choice of tempo, which I thought fit the movement properly within the larger scheme of the entire sonata. Under Schiff’s hands, even the very tricky second theme (m. 86), with rapid 16^th-notes in the right hand, and 8^th-note interjections in the off beat by the left hand, sounded graceful.

With the final chords of the movement that end the work with a pyrrhic victory, the audience stood up to cheer, as did I. In his own notes for the recital, Sir Andras Schiff writes that Schubert’s playing of his own lieder, “transported his listeners to higher spheres and brought tears to their eyes.” I could easily say the same for Schiff’s own performances these last few days.

No amount of sophisticated technology can replace the power of live music making, especially when it is under the hands of a master like Andras Schiff.

Under the urging of the audience, Schiff very graciously played for us the Aria from Bach’s Goldberg Variations. It was playing with a luminous quality, of fluidity, and flexibility. Could this have been a tantalizing preview of Sir Andras Schiff’s next appearance in our city?

Late Sonatas

Sir Andras Schiff has been playing his series of three recitals, entitled “The Late Sonatas”, throughout the world. So it is fortuitous for Vancouver to have been included as a “major musical centre” when he gave the first of two recitals here this year (the first recital of the series was given last season). Schiff has gotten to the point in his musical life that anything he does is at least interesting, and worth our attention.

One can tell a lot about the personality of the performer by how he or she walks onto the stage. Schiff exudes utter calmness as he levitates towards the piano, sits down, and meditates for a brief moment before he puts his hands on the keyboard. This would have been inconsequential if the music making wasn’t of the highest order, which it was Sunday afternoon.

Mozart’s Sonata in B-flat major, K. 570 that opened the recital, sounds at first like a conventional (conventional in design, that is) work. It is not until the development section, when Mozart guides us through many startlingly “foreign” keys that things become really interesting, so much so that the return to B-flat major (m. 133) comes as a welcomed relief. In the exposition and recapitulation, my attention was drawn to how Schiff illuminated Mozart’s writing for the left hand, as in the quick passagework at mm. 35 to 39 (and at 162 to 169), as well as the left-hand melody at mm. 57 to 62 (and mm 187 to 192). Moreover, his playing of the development section really highlighted the colouristic changes with the rapid key changes.

In the second movement, Schiff made us aware of the dark colours and chromaticism in the B section of the movement, as well as the absolutely radiant beauty of the sudden shift into the coda from an abridged return to a shortened A section. The final Allegretto movement was played with a gentle playfulness and much zest. I find it fascinating that Mozart wrote no dynamic markings for the movement until the 8 measures before the end of the movement, when he wrote 4 different dynamic markings for those final eight bars. Schiff certainly brought out those forte-piano contrasts in those final measures of the movement.

With Beethoven’s Sonata in A-flat major, Op. 110, Schiff brought us into the inner world of Beethoven’s late period. Schiff’s interpretation of the Op. 110 was a spacious one, and he was unafraid of slight shifts in the pulse of the music - more of a Furtwängler than a Toscanini approach to the work. From mm. 12 to 16, he held on to the first note of each group of 32^nd notes very slightly. Perhaps he was acknowledging the dots Beethoven wrote on top of those notes. I believe the composer meant these dots to indicate articulation, rather than the simplistic interpretation of a mere staccato. Schiff never forced a sound from the piano, but rather coaxed the instrument to create the sound he had in mind. Perhaps this somewhat minimized the dynamic contrast in the Allegro molto movement, but it was an entirely valid approach.

In the third movement, Beethoven wrote seven dynamic indications within the first seven measures – Adagio ma non troppo, piu adagio, andante, adagio, meno adagio, adagio, and a return to adagio ma non troppo. Of course these are all indications of slow tempi, but it really shows us how meticulous Beethoven is in indicating subtle shifts in tempi, in the pulse of the music. Schiff’s playing of the repeated A’s at m. 5 were light tiny daggers that pierced the heart, and the entire movement was played with heartbreaking poignancy.

In the final movement, I was stunned by Schiff’s playing of the return of the fugue, with its inverted subject (m. 137). Those few notes were played with such a hushed quality, that it was almost as if the music was tottering at the brink of infinity. It was for me, an incredible moment in what was an already incredible interpretation.

Schiff’s playing of Haydn’s Sonata in D major, Hob. XVI: 51 was infused with a kind of gentle humour, almost like that of a soft-spoken comedian. This was very different to Alfred Brendel’s more unbuttoned approach to the composer’s humour. Both movements were played with a beguiling lightness, the perfect sorbet to cleanse our palate between major courses.

In a fascinating book, Four Last Songs – Aging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen, and Britten – authors Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon were struck by how, as composers aged, how, “their creativity functioned – and how differently it functioned – in helping them adapt to the very individual personal situations of their later years.” Hearing this Haydn sonata, as well as the Mozart that opened the programme, certainly reminded me of that statement. Obviously, the elderly Haydn lost none of the spark and humour that he exhibited in his earlier works.

The artist’s interpretation of Schubert’s Sonata in A major, D. 959 was, to me, a very intimate look at this monumental work. That said, I thought Schiff was very successful in bringing us into the very strange and dark sound world in certain parts of the work. In the Andantino movement, the pianist really made that opening theme float, and gave it a kind of weightless quality. I believe that with this haunting opening, Schubert was already touching death. The pianist really conjured up a real musical storm in the middle section of the movement. In the Scherzo, I was really struck by the vast contrast between the delicate and charming with the dark and the demonic. Schiff’s playing of the opening of the last movement, one of the composer’s most congenial melodies, was as warm, as gemütlich as the music demands. Compared with the second and third movements, Schubert doesn’t give us as much contrast in mood. On Sunday, it was almost as if Schiff was leading us through a beautiful journey in sound. At the end of the movement, the pianist really held on for a long time to the fermata of the sustained A, until the last trace of sound evaporated.

Once again, Andras Schiff’s playing yesterday reminded me of Busoni’s statement that during a performance, an artist must lose and find himself at the same time. During yesterday’s concert, I had the feeling that time stood still. On the other hand, when the performance was over, I felt that 90 minutes never passed so quickly. An artist like Schiff took away any awareness of the mechanics of playing the piano. Schiff has never been a musician that seeks to impress. Rather, he is an artist who allows us a brief look into the spiritual and emotional core of the composer’s works, a glimpse into infinity.

I look forward to the second part of the journey this evening.

New Insights into Beethoven's Symphonies

Last year, I enjoyed reading and learned a great deal from Jan Swafford’s Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph. In the beginning of this new year of 2016, I have been completely enthralled by another new book on the symphonist from Bonn. Lewis Lockwood’s Beethoven Symphonies: An Artistic Vision (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2015) was, for me, a real page-turner, shedding many new lights onto these iconic masterpieces that are such a part of our consciousness.

I was astounded to learn that because of the direction Beethoven scholarship and research took in the 20^th century, only about twenty percent of the composer’s sketchbooks have been transcribed and published. In this information-packed book, the author went back to the source material including, significantly, the Eroica Sketchbook and, even more interestingly, many of Beethoven’s brief concept sketches marked Sinfonia or Sinfonie, tantalizing ideas for symphonies that “never got beyond this incipient stage.”

For each of the symphony, the author gives an outline and analysis of each movement. What made this book such a compelling read was the author’s insights into the genesis of each of the nine symphonies, as well as some of the historical and biographical background.

Throughout the book, Lockwood made connections between incidents –  personal and historical - in Beethoven’s life and the genesis of the symphonies. He argued against scholars such as Carl Dahlhaus, who dismissed the “intertwining of a great artist’s life and work” by “regarding the events of Beethoven’s life as essentially irrelevant to his works.”

In the introductory chapter, the author recounted a conversation between violinist Karl Holz and Beethoven. Holz intimated that one finds in the composer’s instrumental works a representation (Darstellung) analogous to the state of Beethoven’s soul. Because only Holz’s statement had been written down, we do not know what the composer’s response was, but we could deduce from Holz’s subsequent statements that Beethoven was not in disagreement.

Just as in the string quartets and piano sonatas, we can trace in the symphonies the evolution and development of his thinking as a composer, Lockwood argues that the symphonies “were not merely conceived as individual projects but were the products of an artistic vision that persisted throughout Beethoven’s lifetime.” This argument is borne out by the fact that ideas for many of the later symphonies were conceived of many years before the actual composition of the works. For instance, although it has been generally accepted that Beethoven sketched ideas for a D minor symphony in 1811 to 1812. But a much earlier entry in 1804 in the Eroica Sketchbook reveals an entry marked “Sinfonia in D Moll,” months after he completed his early drafts for the Eroica symphony and the Waldstein Sonata, and shortly after he wrote down his initial ideas for the Fifth Symphony. These early seeds, according to Lockwood, “looks at first like a passing thought but…holds the seeds of later growth.”

Knowledgeable music lovers would know of Beethoven’s early, middle and late period compositions. Lockwood classified Beethoven’s nine symphonies into five compositional phases. The first phase ends with the writing of the First Symphony, when Beethoven was “establishing his credentials, having delayed the writing of a symphony until he had an opportunity for a public concert.” The second phase (1801 to 1806) covers the Second and Third, as well as first ideas for the Fifth and (less so) the Sixth, and includes composition of his sole opera, Leonore, its two great overtures (Nos. 2 and 3), and the Fourth Symphony. The third phase comprises the closely intertwined Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. The fourth phase covers the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies. After that came a hiatus from writing symphonies (although there were ideas for them) until his work on the Ninth Symphony - 1822 to 1824 - the fifth period.

There were also interesting discussions on the subject of the dedication of the Eroica Symphony. On the published title page, the dedication was “composed to celebrate the remembrance of a great man.” The author speculated whether the composer was thinking of Napoleon, as he was before his coronation. Another plausible candidate that might have captured the composer’s imagination would have been Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, killed in battle in 1806. Lockwood believed that instead of a single individual, Beethoven was referring to “an ideal, mythic figure, whose heroism is represented by the power and weight of this symphony and whose death is commemorated by its Funeral March as second movement.”

Beethoven’s sketchbooks contain not only musical ideas for compositions, but “concept sketches and movement-plans,” using musical notations as well as words. Lockwood pointed out that these movement plans reveal that the composer “could establish what its primary lineaments might be, and even if the movement-sequence changed later, at least one basic movement-idea often remained intact, one that could serve as the invariant against which he could set the other movements.” Therefore, it seems that Beethoven composed with a basic musical idea, a “basic thematic shape that has a definite form in pitch content and rhythm.” From this primary idea, the anchor or the invariant factor of the work, he could then “build successive elaborations and contrasts as he worked out the larger shape of a movement or a piece.” In the Eroica, for instance, the anchor or invariant would be the E-flat major theme that formed the symphony’s finale, but was earlier used in his ballet The Creatures of Prometheus as well as the Op. 35 piano variations, the so-called Eroica Variations.

Regarding the Pastoral Symphony, there was a discussion of the programmatic nature (or not) of the work. From the statement of Donald Francis Tovey that “not a bar of the ‘Pastoral’ Symphony would have been different if its ‘programme’ had never been thought of,” to the claim in the 19^th century that Beethoven was “father of nineteenth-century program music,” Lockwood pointed out that one view needs not really invalidate the other. The author quoted from an article by Richard Will that Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, “inhabits two generic worlds, that of the symphony and that of the programmatic symphony as it was practiced, not by Berlioz and Liszt, but by Beethoven’s contemporaries and predecessors.” On the one hand, Lockwood argued, Beethoven was using “time-honored pictorial devices known to the programmatic genres… in such a way that listeners could indeed delight in recognizing and enjoying his imitations of natural sounds within the fabric of the composition.” One needs go no further than to think of the famous birdcalls at the end of the second movement, where Beethoven actually named the three individual birds. That said, the composer was, at the same time, writing a symphonic work “whose high level of expressive and formal cogency would match that of his recent path-breaking symphonies.”

The author gave his readers much food for thought about the (relatively) less played symphonies – the first and second, the fourth and eighth. Lockwood told us, for instance that, “without the innovations of the Second Symphony the Eroica might not have been possible.” About the slow movement of the Fourth Symphony, Lockwood wrote that it “fully anticipates the world of the Romantics four decades later.” Regarding the Scherzo of the same work, a full five-part form with all sections written out (rather than merely repeated), the writer believes that this movement “now stands up handsomely to the other large movements in its weight and length, rather than serving as a point of relaxation before the finale.” I was fascinated to learn that sketches for the Eighth Symphony show that Beethoven initially conceived of the musical ideas not for a symphony at all, but for a piano concerto. Regarding the Eighth Symphony, Lockwood reminded us that Beethoven’s “re-animation of the classical manner in the Eighth should be seen not as a regression, but as a further widening of his command of a wide range of stylistic direction.” The author went on to argue that many aspects of this work foreshadow the composer’s late style.

A discussion of all the fascinating revelations this book contains would not be possible in this brief piece, but I would like to end with the author’s view, as part of the section that addresses the slow movement of the Ninth Symphony, that Beethoven “is too little appreciated as a melodic composer because of the powerful developmental character of so much of his music.” Lockwood quoted Beethoven’s own words in a letter from 1825, that “melody must always be given priority above all else.” To me, the idea of melody for Beethoven might be akin to Wagner’s idea of melos, or song. Not an 8-bar melody in the sense of a Rossini aria, but something larger, something that is capable of expanding over an entire large-scale structure, such as a movement of a Beethoven symphony. Wagner reportedly believed that “the melodic flow in the Beethoven symphonies streams forth inexhaustibly, and that by means of these melodies one can clearly recall to memory the whole symphony.”

Can we, with all the disturbing news of wars and violence that come our way from every corner of the globe, still believe in Schiller’s sentiment that: “All men shall become brothers” (Alle Menschen werden Brüder)? Lockwood ended this mastery volume by sharing with his readers an excerpt from Kant that Beethoven wrote down for himself, “the moral law within us and the starry skies above us.” Indeed Beethoven’s “belief that personal recognition of both the earthly and the transcendental enables the realization of the human potential.” The symphonies of Beethoven, even today, bring us to a higher plane of consciousness, a higher plane of existence, and they are perfect examples that great music can still mean something to us in this “fragmented and pessimistic age.”

Patrick May

A Glorious Finale

I cannot think of a better programme to end the Vancouver Recital Society’s 2014-2015 season than the last three sonatas of Beethoven, especially when the artist is Paul Lewis.

Lewis has, by now, lived with these towering works for a long time, and it showed. From the first, deceptively simple, notes of the Op. 109, to the ethereal ending of the Op. 111, the performances revealed Lewis’ deep love and regard for these works, as well as a command of the overall structure and architecture of these elusive works that comes only with time.

Other than the emotional associations we have toward these works, it is important to remember that by the end of his life, Beethoven was no longer performing as a virtuoso pianist. Indeed, there are many of the early and middle period sonatas that are more technically demanding than these three last sonatas. What he wrote during this last period of his life, be it the last string quartets or the piano sonatas, the Diabelli Variations, or the Op. 119 Bagatelles, he wrote in spite of, and not for, the medium. That said, it of course takes a supreme artist and pianist to overcome the technical hurdles in these works. Lewis’ performance last night succeeded in making me forget that someone was playing the piano, and I can think of no higher compliment.

From the unassuming opening of the Op. 109 sonata, with its rippling broken chords, Paul Lewis was in complete control of all the elements and details of the score, yet without losing sight of the complete picture. In the third movement, with the heavenly theme, travelling through the incredible series of variations, and then back to the main theme, Lewis played as if, from the first chord of the theme, he clearly saw the way back to the main theme without losing his way. When the theme did return, one felt as if one had been traveling on an incredible journey with the artist.

For me, the high point of the first half of the concert was how Lewis built the last movement of the Op. 110 sonata, from its simple, unassuming opening with the few notes of the fugue subject, and slowly, gradually the music soared and soared until it reached the summit, with the triumphant A-flat chord. To my ears, it was the most well thought out interpretation of this difficult movement, yet without sacrificing spontaneity.

Lewis’ playing of the 1^st movement of the Op. 111 sonata was, in a word, sweeping, as if there was not a single moment of self-doubt. I have the feeling that when Beethoven wrote these sonatas, he was already speaking to us from another world. Nowhere is this more evident than in the 2^nd and final movement, where I get the sense that the music is taking us away from physical reality, and that we are travelling to the realm of the purely spiritual. The playing in this movement was simply glorious, especially in the pages of trills in the final pages, and with the theme tottering just on the edge, delicate and fragile. It is, to me, the most incredible closing in all of music. Lewis succeeded in conveying the otherworldly beauty of this music. At the end of the performance, I felt that it would almost have been rude to applaud.

All in all, an auspicious end to what had been a great season of live music. Now that Paul Lewis had shared with us so much of his thoughts on Beethoven, perhaps Leila Getz would see to it that he returns with further thoughts on the music of Franz Schubert, another composer that has been occupying the time and thoughts of Paul Lewis.