Beethoven's Piano Sonatas

[San Antone]

Here is what I gleaned from his website.

"Michael Nuber is a music raptor at the piano and you can understand, when you listen to him, how the past fabulous characters Liszt and Paganini enchanted their audience so completely that they were even credited with non-terrestrial powers." (Rems newspaper)

Here is an overview of all the CDs released so far , which you can order directly at my concerts or here by email (mail@michael-nuber.de).

For decades I have given up all recordings because the audience (my contact person!) is missing from studio recordings. It was only in 2006 that I agreed to a live recording during the performance of Beethoven's 3rd piano concerto (with Joachim Wagner as conductor). I realized that this recording has amazing musical substance. After Joachim Wagner offered me to record all of my concerts in Schwäbisch Gmünd - as live concert recordings - many recordings of masterpieces by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Debussy, by numerous Russian but also almost unknown composers, which are gradually released by the JAW-classics company.

Short bio:
He was repeatedly engaged by His Royal Highness, the Duke of Württemberg. Participation in the festival "European Church Music" in Schwäbisch Gmünd with a Liszt program, engagements at the palace concerts in Tettnang, Altshausen, Hermsdorf / Dresden and Lindach art castle.

His extensive repertoire focuses on Bach, Beethoven (all 32 piano sonatas), Schubert, Chopin (complete works), Liszt, Scriabin and Debussy.

Since the age of 16, Michael Nuber has also dedicated himself to composition. Since then, in addition to numerous piano works, he has written several sonatas and album pages for flute and piano, a fantasy for cello and piano, a trio for piano, flute and cello, a sonata for two pianos, a duo for piano four hands, songs and a four-movement fantasy for Piano as a psychogram of a young woman who is in a serious life crisis.

[Todd]

A music raptor in service to the Duke of Württemberg?  Sign me up!

[Todd]

Here is an overview of all the CDs released so far , which you can order directly at my concerts or here by email (mail@michael-nuber.de).

He has a vast repertoire.  I wonder if he hangs out with Claudio Colombo.

[George]

Slow.  Lotsa slow stuff in this set.  One can glean that from some of the timings, not least the 54'+ Hammerklavier, with its 25'+ Adagio.  How one feels about slow Beethoven may inform the decision to buy or listen to this set.  Not me, of course, I preordered the first day the set was avaialble and waited anxiously for it to arrive.  Out of the gate, the first two Op 2 sonatas sounded spontaneous, at least in places - aided by the live recording - but they also sounded a bit heavy for the material and a bit off-kilter, with extra-slow slow movements.  With Op 2/3, Lifschitz finds his groove, or rather my taste aligns with his approach, and he demonstrates that he can do the virtuosity thing.  This sonata starts a fairly long chain of high-grade, if slightly idiosyncratic takes on the sonatas.  Op 7 is really very fine, with perfectly judged opening and slow movements, all three Op 10 sonatas sound just swell, as does the weighty Op 13, the almost but not quite overdone Op 14 sonatas, and the extremely fine Op 22.  Here, somewhat against expectations, Lifschitz's slow approach to the slow movement really pays dividends, and the whole sonata is superb.  Everything cruises along nicely until Op 31/1.  The strange thing is that I thought all of Op 31 would work splendidly. Lifschitz adds spontaneity to an obviously well thought approach, and I started to think of him as basically a spontaneous neo-Kuerti.  Except for 31/1.  I'm not  a huge fan of Kuerti's cycle overall, but he delivers one of the great 31/1s, but Lifschitz whiffs.  The opening movement is a bit broad, but the 14'+ slow movement is just too much.  And the finale also drags.  31/2 is also too slow, but Lifschitz's tendency to play dynamic extremes well helps here, though the slow movement is again too slow.  31/3 is good, with more energy, and the Op 49 sonatas are nice enough.  The 50s are mixed.  The tendency toward slowness makes the Waldstein drag a bit in places, and the stark dynamic contrasts are not nuanced enough.  This latter tendency also informs Op 54, and Op 57 at times comes close to banging, though in person I'm sure it would work.  Things then sort of cruise along at a good or very good level until Op 101, which sounds too heavy, kludgy, and almost sloppy in the fugal music, something which reappears in the finale movement of Op 106, which itself has a saggy, way too slow slow movement.  The day I listened to the last three sonatas I also happened to revisit Fazil Say's recent set, and listening to both on the same day offers a fairly stark contrast.  Both tend toward individuality almost to a fault, but there's something more right about what Say does.  It just jells more, and the playing is more refined.  To be sure, there are good things in the last three works from Lifschitz, but they're not as elevated as I like, and the half-hour plus Op 111 is again too slow for me.  So, as with his set of Violin Sonatas with Daishin Kashimoto, a mixed bag, with some really good stuff in the first half of the cycle.

Sound for the live recordings is excellent, but not the best avaialble.

Third tier.

Though I think more highly of his set that you do, I agree that it is a mixed bag. Very disappointing considering how well he plays the early works.

[staxomega]

I've worked my way through Say's cycle, and it's close to what I expected, but not quite what I'd hoped for in some respects.  Much of the playing is more refined than expected, and Say's earlier wild man ways are less evident.  I've not done A/Bs with the five LvB sonatas he recorded before, but I will at some point.  To be sure, Say's playing is quite willful much of the time, and most of the time it works well.  His cycle makes for a good overall contrast with Igor Levit.  Levit is willful at times, and while his piano playing is more refined and secure, his willfulness seems more contrived and studied.  Say's more than occasionally seems more spontaneous and makes more sense in the context of his playing.  Like any other cycles, there are relative highpoints.  For me, 2/3, 13, 28 (with great contrast between the first two movements), 31/3, 53, and 101 stand out.  101, in particular, works very well, with some slow tempo and less clangorous than expected playing in the march.  Not a top tier cycle, but second tier.  I need to do another run-through before Lifschitz arrives.

I listened to the first five sonatas, not much unusual in the first two, I'd honestly not be able to tell they were Fazil Say (if the humming weren't there) if they came up on one of my random playlists and I was listening blind, but by the third sonata I've got to agree with you this is special. I've never heard anyone play the Scherzo like that, overall exceptional. Some more willful playing pops up in the fourth sonata but in a good way with a really lovely Allegro. I am looking forward to hearing more, he has really mellowed out from his earlier recordings. I've also listened to his Nocturnes CD, again nothing really weird or too interventional about them, they're quite normal. These are a stark contrast to his older recordings, he sounds like he doesn't have anything to prove.

I like Warner's "richer" recording/micing, it suits Say's style.

Edit: his liner notes are an... interesting read. I can see how he drew some inspiration from Schnabel with how he plays faster and slower movements and the overall big picture approach

[Florestan]

Edit: [Fazil Say's] liner notes are an... interesting read.

Speaking of which, could anyone please be so kind as to let me have the booklet in digital format?

TD, not a listen but a reading:

https://www.academia.edu/3245627/In_Defense_of_Moonlight

A thoroughly researched and entirely convincing (to me at least) scholarly essay arguing that Rellstab's infamous sobriquet of the Op. 27/2 is not only apt but have much more profound musical and literary reasons than one might think. Worth a reading even, or especially, by purists who would have nothing of this moonshine (pun).

[Madiel]

The reason people don't want it is because it relates to one movement out of three.

Of course there are plenty of other nicknames that suffer from a similar problem.

[Florestan]

The reason people don't want it is because it relates to one movement out of three.

The essay touches on this point as well. I'd say read it, you won't regret. Even if eventually you disagree (which is of course okay), it's a well written and well researched piece of cultural history.

Of course there are plenty of other nicknames that suffer from a similar problem.

Yes, even if the composer himself ascribed the nickname. Take Tchaikovsky's 1st Symphony, for instance, "Winter Dreams". Only the first two movements bear corresponding titles, and of those two I find the second greatly misleading. Land of Desolation, Land of Mists, really, Gospodin Tchaikovsky? For the life of me I can't hear anything remotely desolated of foggy in that amiable, gentle, bittersweet-but-more-sweet-than-bitter Adagio cantabile ma non tanto . If I were to give it a nickname, it'd be Land of Youthful Hopes, Land of Old-Age Nostalgia. On the other hand, Dreams of a Winter Journey for the 1st mvt is just perfect. I can vividly picture a three-bell-necklaced-horse-sleigh riding through thetypical  Russian wintery landscape, carrying a team of jolly and merrymaking ladies and gentlemen accompanied by gypsies playing the balalaikas and going from one host to another.

Bottom line, though:

What's in a name etc.

[Mandryka]

Speaking of which, could anyone please be so kind as to let me have the booklet in digital format?

See if this link works for you.

https://static.qobuz.com/goodies/73/000132437.pdf

[Madiel]

I'm not going to read the Moonlight essay because it requires sign-up. I've had enough of sites wanting my data for even the briefest interaction. Deleting accounts is usually so much harder than creating them.

Edit: Anyway, I accept that there are far worse nicknames out there than this one.

[Florestan]

I'm not going to read the Moonlight essay because it requires sign-up.

Drat! I forgot that! It doesn't take much time, though, and they don't ask for your credit card data for the basic level subscription --- otherwise I wouldn't have signed up myself. And it's a treasure trove of scholarly essays on music and composers., so you might consider it. And no, I don't get any money for every new subscriber. 

[Florestan]

See if this link works for you.

https://static.qobuz.com/goodies/73/000132437.pdf

Works perfectly! Thank you very much, Howard, you're the man! 

[GioCar]

I'm not going to read the Moonlight essay because it requires sign-up. I've had enough of sites wanting my data for even the briefest interaction. Deleting accounts is usually so much harder than creating them.

Edit: Anyway, I accept that there are far worse nicknames out there than this one.

You have to sign-up only if you want to download the pdf. For reading, just scroll down the page of that link.

[Madiel]

You have to sign-up only if you want to download the pdf. For reading, just scroll down the page of that link.

Thank you. What a strangely set up page, with a big gap! It feels as if they want to trick you into thinking you need to sign up and hide the fact the article is actually there.

[Madiel]

Okay, I didn't read it word for word but did scan it fairly thoroughly and for the sense of it. And it's quite a good piece of work. It makes a good case how not just that piece, but that sort of music had moon associations.

Also... I now absolutely want to program op.27/2 with at least 2 different Chopin works in C sharp minor.

[staxomega]

Speaking of which, could anyone please be so kind as to let me have the booklet in digital format?

I see Mandryka has you sorted, sorry for not seeing it earlier, I made a decision to spend less time online after reading some interesting articles on these yoots that are glued to the web.

Have you been listening to Fazil Say? I've ground to a halt with 31/3, I was a bit let down with the Pastoral Sonata, up until then I was consuming it at rapid rate. There are many ways to interpret this, two I feel that really push things with the ebb and flow nature of this sonata are Russell Sherman and Schnabel but for me Say misses the mark.

[Yashar]

Mei-Ting Sun is self-recording the 32 Sonatas live (unedited takes) from his apartment in NYC, and posting them on YouTube, part of a series he calls the "COVID-19 Beethoven Cycle." He first performed the cycle in 2011.

Posted on his Facebook page:
"So, I got a bit bored and thought, what do we need? More Beethoven! To celebrate his 250th anniversary, I'm recording a sonata a day, and releasing them during the month of May for the COVID-19 Beethoven Cycle! Stay tuned - first one due on May 1st (next Friday)!"

The audio recording quality isn't exactly SOTA and the piano is a bit out of tune (he tunes it himself).
But it's an interesting memento of the times we are living through - and made better with Beethoven.

Here is the first video of Op.2 No.1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HJJ1XipMIA&list=PLYwjN0ID38AdGAl5citpMK0bw7qFQJOft&index=1

[Todd]

This Beethoven year has so far seen few intriguing piano sonata recordings issued, and since I own all of the complete sets being reissued, I am forced to contemplate and buy single discs from whenever, including war horse compilations, which I generally dislike.  I found Jae-Hyuck Cho's Beethoven disc while poking around on 7Digital, so I went for it because why not.  Cho was born in ChunCheon, South Korea, started studying as a wee lad, then moved to New York to study some more, most notably under Jerome Lowenthal at Juilliard.  So he's got the academic credentials.

His warhorse disc includes Opp 13, 57, and 53, in that order, with a Schumann-Liszt finisher.  Op 13 starts off conventionally enough.  The Grave opener is strong, but not overwhelming, and the Allegro di molto e con brio is played at a proper tempo, has some nice dynamic contrasts, and some insistent and reasonably steady left hand playing.  The return of the opening material sounds a bit weak and doesn't offer much contrast, but it is inoffensive.  The Adagio cantabile is competently played, steady, and the cantabile playing in the outer sections is nice.  A bit of contrast is introduced in the middle section.  The concluding Rondo is a bit slow and tame.  Some of the right hand playing sounds tonally attractive, though.  Op 57 starts off with an Allegro assai where Cho plays with clean articulation and nice pacing, but dynamics are limited and attack softened a bit.  It's a bit polite.  The Andante con moto is pleasant, with a somewhat leisurely pace, soft or soft-ish playing, and a bit of tonal beauty.  The finale comes off better, with Cho adding more heft to his left hand playing, and moving at a decent pace.  Overall, though, the sonata is kind of bland and forgettable.  Op 53 follows, and Cho opens the Allegro con brio with some pep, though it seems a bit louder than it should, which in turn means that dynamic contrasts later in the movement are muted a bit, but it's good.  The Introduzione sounds contemplative and attractive, and it segues to a Rondo where Cho plays with ample energy, drive, clarity, and nice left hand sforzandi that still seem polished a bit too much.  Overall, it's the best sonata on the disc, but even it is just like a drop of water in a lake of Waldstein recordings.  The Widmung encore starts off gently and beautifully and picks up steam until the end.  Not bad.  Overall, meh.

[Todd]

Ikuyo Nakamichi's full set of sonatas and concertos in one handy, expensive box.  It is one of the 2-3 best recorded cycles out there, so if sonics are important, it is worth consideration.  For now, White Rabbit Express or a similar service is the only way to get the set out of Japan.

[amw]

I have a good feeling about this.