What is your favourite record of Beethoven's op. 111 ?

[Antoine Marchand]

Seconded, though I expect Lubimov will use an old piano for his forthcoming recording. I hope that Paul Komen will finish his cycle.

Agreed, but I also add to get the Beethoven sonatas by Badura-Skoda (the complete set on period instruments, not his cycle on Gramola). 

[mc ukrneal]

Oh, man. How will I avoid buying this. I think I have to get it.

Is it August already?

[david-jw]

I am not Val, but I give the Brilliant/Amadeo one a big thumbs up.

thanks George

[George]

thanks George

No problem. I should add that I give Gulda's whole Amadeo/Brilliant set a big thumbs up.

[Brian]

Is it August already?

That's the problem exactly! I do have some money left on a gift card... that doesn't count, right?
If I spend the next two weeks refreshing my Gmail box, maybe I'll be the first person to get the MusicWeb e-mail list and call dibs on it. That's my only way out...

[Mandryka]

Lubimov did use a fortepiano - a Graff from 1828 to be exactly - and Christophe Huss at Classicstodayfrance is raving ("Sublime, sublissime") about the recording (on Zig-Zag Territoires). (Yes that is in French, a crooked Google translation HERE )

Q

The review is interesting because of the way it suggests he uses the sonorities of the piano --  "La variation des couleurs se superpose aux variations musicales, et les plus intériorisées y gagnent une poétique unique. Pour ce faire, l'instrument est scruté de près par les micros. Il faut savoir prendre du recul en baissant le niveau d'écoute."

And yet  I have seen another comment on a French classical music forum which said the music making was "lourdingue" -- clunky.

Has anyone here  heard it yet.

[FideLeo]

And yet  I have seen another comment on a French classical music forum which said the music making was "lourdingue" -- clunky.

Has anyone here  heard it yet.

mp3 short samples here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beethoven-Piano-Sonatas-Op-109/dp/B004K7N34O/ref=dm_cd_album_bb

Note that Huss started his review by saying, "On devait à Alexei Lubimov le plus beau disque de sonates de Beethoven sur pianoforte, avec son couplage 9, 14, 21 gravé dans la première moitié des années 90 pour Erato." Well, if one doesn't think much of this Erato disc in question (I don't), she might as well try not to take the rest of the review too seriously, because Huss obviously has quite different tastes in Beethoven on fortepiano...

[Que]

And yet  I have seen another comment on a French classical music forum which said the music making was "lourdingue" -- clunky.

The shorter decay of the sounds of a fortepiano sounds to many people "clunky". In that view any fortepiano sounds clunky. Which is a legitimate opinion but not very helpful in this instance. 

I just listened to the samples and it just sounds like a Graf, indeed rather closely recorded but not too much so IMO. A Graf seems to me a nice choice in late Beethoven - he owned one since 1825. But.... by that time he was nearly completely deaf and his op. 111 already completed (1821-22)...

Q

[Mandryka]

The shorter decay of the sounds of a fortepiano sounds to many people "clunky". In that view any fortepiano sounds clunky. Which is a legitimate opinion but not very helpful in this instance. 

I just listened to the samples and it just sounds like a Graf, indeed rather closely recorded but not too much so IMO. A Graf seems to me a nice choice in late Beethoven - he owned one since 1825. But.... by that time he was nearly completely deaf and his op. 111 already completed (1821-22)...

Q

I'm going to buy the CD to see -- I like most everything I've heard from Lubimov. The "review" -- which is more like a comment in a a forum like this, said:


Sinon, il y a Alexei Lubimov qui s'y essaye [ the late sonatas.] Son premier et vieux disque sur pianoforte des sonates de Beethoven chez Erato (introuvable) m'a beaucoup plu: des belles sonorités, un bel équilibre et un sens de l'a-propos assez indéniable (il y a une très belle pathétique notamment ; la clair de lune est un peu plus quelconque dans les intentions). Le nouveau disque qui vient de sortir chez Zig-Zag m'a un peu moins emballé ; j'ai trouvé ça assez lourdingue pour du pianoforte, en fait 


I suspect that the author is pretty familiar with the sound of fortepianos. And maybe "clumsy" is better than ""clunky" for "lourdingue." But you know -- you've just got to suck it and see.

[Discobole]

My favourite version is certainly Edwin Fischer's studio on EMI (1954). But it's not on CD... Anyway, it is public domain in some countries, and you can find it (for free and in flac !) on Musique ouverte : http://www.i12.ch/musiqueouverte
It is far better than the public performance in Salzburg on Orfeo (and the sound is good, despite mono !)

Apart from him, I'd say Serkin, Grinberg, Ernst Levy, Solomon...

[Mandryka]

Who plays the first two variations at roughly the same tempo as the theme and makes it sound good?

[Jo498]

I am pretty sure I have seen somewhere a bunch of recordings by famous pianists evaluated wrt to the tempo fluctuations (or lack thereof) in the variations. It might have been amw or someone else in this forum or someone else in another one.
Sorry, I forgot the details, I only seem to remember that it was a bit different that I'd have expected, i.e. a pianist or 2 I'd have thought to use wide "romantic" tempo variations was one of the more stable ones.

[Mandryka]

Listening to Lill, who does not speed up for the first two variations. The result is weighty, and if you're used to the other approach (which I believe was popularised by Schnabel) it feels too heavy. However, it has a very great impact on the overall form of the whole movement when slower variations reappear before the first transcendental trill.

Lill, by the way, is very effective in the slow low trill at the start of the first movement.

[Cato]

My favorite is an early1960's recording, whose sound London/Decca handled quite well in the stereo LP era, with Wilhelm Backhaus.




The first movement has all the drive and urgency which Beethoven demanded, and the last movement portrays the delicate pathos, hopeful energy, and melancholy ecstasy in the score: a perfect performance to my ear.

Who plays the first two variations at roughly the same tempo as the theme and makes it sound good?

@Mandryka: I think Wilhelm Backhaus might be your man for that job, if I am understanding what you want here.  I do not recall him speeding up much at all.


You can check here:

This topic started in 2011!  Oy!  😇


(And it would be nice to have easy access to the ANGEL EMOTICON!  😇 )

[Mandryka]

@Cato In 1937 Backhaus speeds up the first variations. Presumably under the influence of Schnabel. I'll check the other recordings he made later.

[Cato]

@Cato In 1937 Backhaus speeds up the first variations. Presumably under the influence of Schnabel. I'll check the other recordings he made later.

That performance I do not know, so let me know what you think of the one above.  I think there is a Mono performance from the late 1940's or early 1950's, but I have not yet heard it.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I am pretty sure I have seen somewhere a bunch of recordings by famous pianists evaluated wrt to the tempo fluctuations (or lack thereof) in the variations. It might have been amw or someone else in this forum or someone else in another one.
Sorry, I forgot the details, I only seem to remember that it was a bit different that I'd have expected, i.e. a pianist or 2 I'd have thought to use wide "romantic" tempo variations was one of the more stable ones.

That may have been me, on the Beethoven Piano Sonatas thread, October 7, 2013. Musicologist Robert Winter analyzed tempo variations in some 15 recordings, as well as Schnabel's tempo indications in his edition of the sonatas (see attachment).

If you follow Beethoven's score, there should be no tempo variations at all in this piece. Beethoven writes L'istesso tempo (same speed) twice, and there are no written changes of tempo such as you'll find in op. 109 and the quartets opp. 127 and 131. In op. 111 the theme and each of the variations should occupy the same elapsed time, and some pianists come closer to this (e.g. Edwin Fischer and Charles Rosen), and some farther away, such as Danny Barenboim, who (possibly to make the theme sound more Profound), takes the theme quite slowly and speeds up for each of the variations. Even Minsoo Sohn, le pianiste du jour, takes a notably faster tempo for variation 3 (the boogie-woogie) in his undeniably superb recording.

Beethoven has created some confusion in the multiple meters he uses in this score. The arietta starts with a dotted quarter upbeat in 9/16, which is the meter used for the theme and variation 1. But by variation 2 we're in 6/16 (L'istesso tempo) and for 3 we're in 12/32 (L'istesso again). Donald Tovey, not to be outdone, thought that 3 should really be in 32/64, which in my opinion only confuses the matter. But do the changes in meter mean that an eighth or sixteenth occupies the same time in the 9/16 as in the 6/16 or 12/32? or that the underlying pulse should remain the same?

Both Schnabel and Bulow in their editions, as well as Robert Winter and Eric Blom in their commentaries, maintain that the meter change should apply to the underlying pulse. Hence a measure of 9/16 should be identical in time to a measure of 6/16 (dotted quarter = quarter). However Beethoven doesn't help things by using 6/16, which is normally considered a duple meter (123/456), when he actually wants a triple meter (12/34/56). As for the 12/32, it is mathematically identical to 6/16, which is identical to 3/8. And therefore it seems to me that if Beethoven had used 3/8 from the start rather than 9/16, or even 3/4 as in the variation movement from 109, everything would fall nicely into place and there would be no confusion at all about the meter or tempo markings.

[eoghan]

I gravitate towards Penelope Crawford's recording of the last three sonatas. As a general point, do people feel that as piano technology improved, later Beethoven sonatas work better on a modern piano than the earlier works? I've never thought the Hammerklavier works on a fortepiano (that said, that's a work I've never fallen in love with)

[Jo498]

That may have been me, on the Beethoven Piano Sonatas thread, October 7, 2013. Musicologist Robert Winter analyzed tempo variations in some 15 recordings, as well as Schnabel's tempo indications in his edition of the sonatas (see attachment).

Maybe that was what I had dimly remembered, thank you for the table.

If you follow Beethoven's score, there should be no tempo variations at all in this piece.

Beethoven has created some confusion in the multiple meters he uses in this score. The arietta starts with a dotted quarter upbeat in 9/16, which is the meter used for the theme and variation 1. But by variation 2 we're in 6/16 (L'istesso tempo) and for 3 we're in 12/32 (L'istesso again). Donald Tovey, not to be outdone, thought that 3 should really be in 32/64, which in my opinion only confuses the matter. But do the changes in meter mean that an eighth or sixteenth occupies the same time in the 9/16 as in the 6/16 or 12/32? or that the underlying pulse should remain the same?

Both Schnabel and Bulow in their editions, as well as Robert Winter and Eric Blom in their commentaries, maintain that the meter change should apply to the underlying pulse. Hence a measure of 9/16 should be identical in time to a measure of 6/16 (dotted quarter = quarter). However Beethoven doesn't help things by using 6/16, which is normally considered a duple meter (123/456), when he actually wants a triple meter (12/34/56). As for the 12/32, it is mathematically identical to 6/16, which is identical to 3/8. And therefore it seems to me that if Beethoven had used 3/8 from the start rather than 9/16, or even 3/4 as in the variation movement from 109, everything would fall nicely into place and there would be no confusion at all about the meter or tempo markings.

This certainly seems the natural reading. However, it's very strange why Beethoven should have created such a confusion or how he would arrive at such a strange notation in the first place. (The 6/16 seems so counterintuitive as it remains in 3, not in 2.) Any ideas?

There might be one reading that could justify a speeding up for var. 2+3, namely that 16th notes should be equal from the 9/16 to the 6/16. As the pulse is (dotted) 8th, keeping 16th at e.g. 90 this would imply speeding up from dotted 8th = 30 to 8th = 45. But one could not justify any change from the 6/16 to the 12/32 variation when speeding up is most common.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Well, Beethoven had trouble from time to time with math and associated time signatures. Take 2/4, which in some cases is definitely two beats to the bar (finale to the 1st and Eroica symphonies, op. 110 scherzo), while in others the proper signature should really be 4/8 (second movements of the Pastorale sonata 28, Ghost Trio 70/1, and 8th symphony). And maybe even 1/2, as in the first movement of the 5th symphony. (I once heard Jolli Olli Mustonen play the second movement of the Pastorale in a true 2/4, and it sounded all wrong.)

Schnabel, with his typical verbosity, addresses the 9/16 - 6/16 issue directly, and I'll let you read him for yourself in three languages. But what clinches it for me is that the 6/16 with L'istesso tempo begins on the third beat of the bar following the 2nd ending to variation 1 (keeping the pattern of beginning the theme and all subsequent variations on an upbeat).

Part of the problem is the tempo one takes for the theme. As you'll see from the chart, many pianists take it in the very slow range, with Barenboim at the extreme. This means that if one keeps a strict L'istesso tempo, variations 1 and 2 especially will sound intolerably slow. But Winter also informs us that some 19th-century editions gave a metronome mark of 63 to the dotted quarter. much faster than we're typically accustomed to. (Click link below for an electronic metronome. Remember too that Beethoven's metronome mark for the Adagio of the 9th symphony was 60 to the quarter). So I think if you take the theme at about 48 = dotted quarter, the L'istesso tempi should work out. I'm working on an electronic version of the movement to demonstrate this, but it's not ready yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kZZFyU8WFk