Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Started by BachQ, April 06, 2007, 03:12:18 AM

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amw

Under no circumstances is Variation 3 going to sound like a "slow aria" given the scoring (lots of octaves, broken chords, and virtuosic register shifts), dynamics, rhythmic syncopations, and quick harmonic rhythm. I point you once again in the direction of the slowest existing rendition of that variation* audible here https://youtu.be/y_Ch7JY4i5Y?t=659—it still sounds comparatively brilliant and potentially heroic-C-major-ish, and it tends to sound like that regardless of what specific tempo it's played at. If Beethoven did not intend for it to be an outpouring of ecstatic plenitude or pianistic brilliance or whatever, he should have written different notes and maybe set the whole thing at a dynamic of piano rather than forte, because that's literally always what it is (& it's usually quite thrilling rather than trivial, at least in a good performance).

Madiel

Quote from: calyptorhynchus on March 21, 2020, 12:42:45 AM
What the argument is about is whether pianists should literally increase in speed per beat during the movement.

What you actually SAID was that there should be more beats per bar. Which is very different. And was the primary basis for my comments.
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vers la flamme

All this talk (much of which goes well over my head) has prompted me to put on a recording of op.111 that I've not heard before, Pi-hsien Chen:



I think she does a good job of maintaining the pulse throughout the Arietta, up until the "boogie-woogie" variation where she definitely speeds up a good bit. I really like her sound. Her piano sounds great, warm, but crisp, and she plays with a decisive touch. It's not too too far removed from one of my other favorites, Maurizio Pollini. Worth a listen. (In case anyone is curious, the performances of the Stockhausen Klavierstücke are also very impressive, though I don't know the works in any other recording.)

calyptorhynchus

Further to this discussion of the tempo in the final of Beethoven's Op111, I have been occupied for the last few weeks in orchestrating the Arietta in a score program. Here are the results at metronome 35 per beat throughout (similar to Clarke's tempo):

http://www.mediafire.com/file/h38h3ltun6hickg/Arietta_from_Beethoven%2527s_Piano_Sonata_No_32.flac/file

A Flac file at 80mb I'm afraid as the mp3 output was very poor quality. And of course it is only an electronic rendition, not a real orchestra, so you will have to make allowances.

And here is the score if anyone wants to read this:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ysk6m96r2jowf1t/Arietta_from_Beethoven%2527s_Piano_Sonata_No_32.pdf/file

'Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth.' Robert Burton

Herman

Quote from: calyptorhynchus on March 21, 2020, 12:42:45 AM
When I said var 3 should sound like a slow aria I didn't mean it would sound as slow as the theme (I meant it should sound a lot slower than most interpretations you hear) . And I did say that the movement sounds like it increasing in speed because of smaller note values. What the argument is about is whether pianists should literally increase in speed per beat during the movement.

And if Beethoven had wanted to introduce a trivial dance into this movement he could have just written Allegro alla tedesca.

Part of the problem is the idea that the variation is "trivial" as it is.

We are at a totally different place in time now than Beethoven and his contemporaries are, and what me sound trivial and "boogiewoogie" to us, may have been totally different to Beethoven.
In any case, Beethoven's later works have a lot of episodes where the taste protocol is broken. Including the Turkish band in symphony nr. 9 and the strange march in the great opus 131 string quartet. Beethoven was very much engaged in parodies, and I use this word without "taste" prejudice. The parodies weren't meant to be "funny". He was just as serious when he was writing what sounds to some as a boogiewoogie parody.

It seems to me that these attempts to slow down the third variation in the Arietta is a taste police intervention. Beethoven was a Great Serious Man and everything he did ought to sound accordingly.

Madiel

Quote from: calyptorhynchus on April 19, 2020, 04:31:09 PM
Further to this discussion of the tempo in the final of Beethoven's Op111, I have been occupied for the last few weeks in orchestrating the Arietta in a score program. Here are the results at metronome 35 per beat throughout (similar to Clarke's tempo):

http://www.mediafire.com/file/h38h3ltun6hickg/Arietta_from_Beethoven%2527s_Piano_Sonata_No_32.flac/file

A Flac file at 80mb I'm afraid as the mp3 output was very poor quality. And of course it is only an electronic rendition, not a real orchestra, so you will have to make allowances.

And here is the score if anyone wants to read this:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ysk6m96r2jowf1t/Arietta_from_Beethoven%2527s_Piano_Sonata_No_32.pdf/file

This doesn't mean anything unless you explain what you considered to be a "beat". I've already pointed out that your own initial attempt at explanation was contrary to Clarke's writing. Did you keep 3 beats per bar throughout?
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calyptorhynchus

Quote from: Madiel on April 20, 2020, 05:31:08 AM
This doesn't mean anything unless you explain what you considered to be a "beat". I've already pointed out that your own initial attempt at explanation was contrary to Clarke's writing. Did you keep 3 beats per bar throughout?

Have a listen.
'Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth.' Robert Burton

Madiel

I'd rather you explain your technique first.
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Madiel

#1848
Never mind. I'm sorry but it's too slow from the beginning.

I mean, I can check that you basically have it right by establishing that each variation takes the same amount of chronological time (just under 2:45). But 2:45 per variation is slower than most of the recordings that amw listed. And that coupled with using sustaining instruments rather than piano sound is inevitably going to make the end result sound poor even if you have the maths right.

Make the theme last a considerably shorter time and you might have something.

EDIT: A beat approaching 45 rather than 35 might do it.
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amw

I'd agree that a tempo of 35 BPM is probably too slow for 111/ii. But Christoph Eschenbach among others would not, and I have never made any recordings for Warner Classics whereas he has, so that's obviously a matter of opinion.

I would say, however, that Op.111 (and Beethoven sonatas in general) are not good candidates for orchestration. Those with Spotify or Deezer etc can test that assertion by listening to the Weingartner orchestration of Op.106, recorded by Weingartner himself in the 30s. Mainly it's the wide spectrum of timbres across registers that lets orchestrations down, e.g. a flute on the high notes vs a contrabass on the low notes when part of Beethoven's conception was that both high and low notes, chords and single notes should be projected by one relatively consistent timbre at relatively consistent volumes. If one is tasked with arranging a Beethoven piano work for another ensemble the only things I can see that would work would be ensembles with a relative uniformity of timbre, e.g. a string quartet, recorder ensemble, guitar quartet or duo, etc. The other problem is when people attempt to literally transcribe piano figurations for other instruments (as Weingartner does as well) to which they are not suited. Some amount of creative rewriting is necessary because there is no way to make e.g. an Alberti bass or an arpeggio figuration sound good on any other instrument except maybe the harp. (And one must also write out the effects of piano pedalling.)

calyptorhynchus

Ah well, I make no claims for the 'orchestration', I just wanted to have the movement in a form where I could dial the speed up and down and listen to it, and then it occurred to me that if I was going to bother to enter all the notes it would be fun to give them to different instruments.

Piece of trivia, did you know that the piano has a higher range than any orchestral instrument? In this movement I had to use the piccolo for the highest notes that Beethoven uses!
'Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth.' Robert Burton

Madiel

Quote from: calyptorhynchus on April 28, 2020, 01:55:45 AM
Piece of trivia, did you know that the piano has a higher range than any orchestral instrument?

Yes.
I am now working on a discography of the works of Vagn Holmboe. Please visit and also contribute!

Herman

Perhaps this should be in the Great Recordings section, however I was wondering whether anybody here had been in contact yet with the Quatuor Ebene's complete recording of the LvB quartets, the one they recorded live on a giant world tour.

amw

Quote from: Herman on May 27, 2020, 08:06:08 AM
Perhaps this should be in the Great Recordings section, however I was wondering whether anybody here had been in contact yet with the Quatuor Ebene's complete recording of the LvB quartets, the one they recorded live on a giant world tour.
Yes. It's very good, mostly for the ensemble playing, which is very high quality and lived-in, and the beauty of their tone—the sound the quartet can make when they play without vibrato is remarkable, polished and almost choir-like, and instantly recogniseable as theirs. (Their intonation in chords has occasional imperfections, but not ones a casual listener would notice.) They are somewhat idiosyncratic in their interpretive choices, favouring the long pause and the expressive micro-ritardando to a great extent, which might bother some people. But they are clearly very enthusiastic about the music.

I've listened on headphones and can't detect any acoustic differences between recordings made in different cities, nor any trace of audience noise. So the recordings were either made with very close miking, or the quartet sat down and recorded them all back home in Paris after finishing their world tour and simply used it as a gimmick, or someone in the studio has been very busy trying to make the acoustic envelope uniform. Not sure which.

Style points of comparison: Lindsay Quartet, Artemis Quartet, Belcea Quartet, Leipzig Quartet
Technique/performance quality points of comparison: Takács Quartet, Artemis Quartet, Auryn Quartet, Busch Quartet
Personal grade: A+

I may eventually do a comparison of the four (or more) cycles that have come out so far for the Beethoven 250 (those being the Ébène, Cuarteto Casals, Kuss Quartet & Miró Quartet—not sure if there are more to expect later on) but don't hold your breath for it.

Madiel

Well Todd loves the hell out of it on the WAYLTN thread.
I am now working on a discography of the works of Vagn Holmboe. Please visit and also contribute!

SurprisedByBeauty

Latest on ClassicsToday (insider content, alas): The Mandolin and Beethoven's Saturday Night Fever.


Filling In The Gaps: Beethoven For The Mandolin

Papy Oli

The BBC has an ongoing documentary series called Being Beethoven, 2 episodes so far.

Contributors include so far Marin Alsop, Boris Giltburg, Viviana Sofronitsky and apparently Paul Lewis, concert extracts with Ivan Fischer...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m000kqq4/being-beethoven
Olivier

Todd

The universe is change; life is opinion. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

People would rather believe than know - E.O. Wilson

Propaganda death ensemble - Tom Araya

Florestan

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Archaic Torso of Apollo

Quote from: Florestan on November 04, 2020, 07:04:07 AM
This piece is just as stupid as the criticism of Beethoven it purports to rebuke.

I wouldn't go that far, but this notion that we should like LvB because he was revolutionary or a liberator or whatever is way overblown. If that were the case, French revolutionary composers like Gossec and Mehul would still be popular. They're not.

Like most great artists, LvB was a self-centered egomaniac. That was the root of his struggles against authority.

Claiming that LvB would have voted for Joe Biden (!) is presentism at its worst.
formerly VELIMIR (before that, Spitvalve)

"Who knows not strict counterpoint, lives and dies an ignoramus" - CPE Bach