Beethoven's Piano Sonatas

[Fred]

Been listening to Michelangeli play 111 (the Decca version).  What a stunning performance. I expected, based on his reputation, that it would be rather dry and clinical.  Far from it. For most of its length, it's just a raging torrent.  Sound OK, but not great. Truly amazing that Decca hasn't remastered this masterful performance (when you consider what else gets remastered three or four times).

[George]

Been listening to Michelangeli play 111 (the Decca version).  What a stunning performance. I expected, based on his reputation, that it would be rather dry and clinical.  Far from it. For most of its length, it's just a raging torrent.  Sound OK, but not great. Truly amazing that Decca hasn't remastered this masterful performance (when you consider what else gets remastered three or four times).

At the least reissue it. I haven't heard it and used copies start at $35 on amazon.

[jlaurson]

L.v. Beethoven
Beethoven Sonatas v.6
(Sonatas 9-11, 15)
Timothy Ehlen
Azica
German link - UK link

Low-key pleasantness...

[Todd]

L.v. Beethoven
Beethoven Sonatas v.6
(Sonatas 9-11, 15)
Timothy Ehlen
Azica
German link - UK link

Low-key pleasantness...

That'd be a step up for this cycle.  Odd that Amazon US doesn't list it in stock.

[George]

Low-key pleasantness...

Thanks for the warning! 

[Mandryka]

Has anyone had a chance to hear the 1961 Kempff sonatas from Tokyo? How is the sound? Can you make any comments on the performances yet? I've held off ordering, despite great curiosity, because of the cost, but I am itching to get it really.

[Todd]

Has anyone had a chance to hear the 1961 Kempff sonatas from Tokyo? How is the sound? Can you make any comments on the performances yet? I've held off ordering, despite great curiosity, because of the cost, but I am itching to get it really.

My copy shipped today from HMV Japan, along with two other cycles and some other stuff.  I should be able to report back sometime in November.

[Todd]

Received my copy.  Not only does the set have two recordings of the Diabellis, it has a new recording of Op 111 and 126.  111 and one set of Diabellis is performed on the same Bechstein that Wilhelm Backhaus used for some performances and recordings, and the other Diabelli and Op 126 are performed on an 1820 fortepiano.  Should make for some interesting listening.

[kishnevi]

Received my copy.  Not only does the set have two recordings of the Diabellis, it has a new recording of Op 111 and 126.  111 and one set of Diabellis is performed on the same Bechstein that Wilhelm Backhaus used for some performances and recordings, and the other Diabelli and Op 126 are performed on an 1820 fortepiano.  Should make for some interesting listening.

I've already recorded my first impression here on GMG, and will be interested in yours.  I'll only say that I'm not sure the contrast in instruments for the Diabellis provided anything new to the conversation.

[George]

Received my copy.  Not only does the set have two recordings of the Diabellis, it has a new recording of Op 111 and 126.  111 and one set of Diabellis is performed on the same Bechstein that Wilhelm Backhaus used for some performances and recordings, and the other Diabelli and Op 126 are performed on an 1820 fortepiano.  Should make for some interesting listening.

Interesting. I thought Backhaus had used a Bösendorfer for his Beethoven recordings.

[Pat B]

Copying some relevant posts from the listening thread over here:

Hmm.  The Arietta from the 32nd Sonata (played on a 1920 Bechstein) was downright jazzy in places;  the Bagatelles (1820 Brodmann) were excellent; the main attraction,  the pair of Diabellis (one on each instrument), I'm much less decided about, and while the sound of the instruments was of course noticeably different,  I'm not sure there were any other important  differences between the two performances. The artist photos in the liner booklet, showing Schiff playing in what seems to be a very sumptous dressing gown/bathrobe,  are slightly odd.  (He does seem to have aged noticeably in the last few years.) Further listens will be required before anything like a final opinion can be rendered.

Don't tell Mr. Schiff that; you'll upset him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hQBq8_5lCEY#t=1516

www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=wk-iqxqixhY#t=105

"Banality." Ouch! Well, I wouldn't say "jazz," and I definitely wouldn't say "boogie woogie," but I do hear a clear foreshadow of ragtime. Ragtime was a precursor to (or arguably an early form of) jazz though many other styles of jazz sound very different. But when people say it sounds jazzy, we know what they mean.

Schiff seems to think the word "jazzy" diminishes its spirituality. This variation is obviously not the solemn or peaceful sense of spiritual. It's more ecstatic as Schiff says. I don't think jazzy is incompatible with that.

Thread duty: Beethoven: Piano Sonata, op. 111 (Kempff '51)

I agree. The first time I noticed this variation, I checked my iPod for a Scott Joplin track (even though I knew there was none).

Agree here too! Ludwig was letting his hair down... more than usual.

My comments are about the 2nd movement, 3rd variation. I've had it stuck in my head for several days. Eventually I realized that in my head, I hear a swing rhythm (triplets with the first two tied) -- which is "jazzy" -- but it's actually written as dotted 32nd and 64th notes.

Meanwhile I've listened to 3 recordings (Kempff '51, Gulda on Amadeo, and the mp3 of Jumppanen from the Gardner Museum). I wasn't always specifically listening for it but I think all of them play the dotted rhythms as written.

I don't own either of Schiff's recordings, but I have listened to those lectures several times. And despite his protests about thinking of it as "jazzy," his rhythms sound swung, not dotted, to me.

Does anybody else hear this?

The others I own are Pollini and Komen. I'll try to re-listen to them over the next few days then follow up. According to wikipedia, two pianists who refer to jazz are Uchida and Denk, neither of whom I have heard.

[Parsifal]

There's also this cycle, in progress

[asin]B00B2N0OZU[/asin]

[amw]

The rhythms are in fact triplets, not dotted; the numbers aren't written in (the score would be even messier than it already is if they were) so it can be hard to tell, but each 32nd beat is in fact subdivided into a triplet 32nd and a triplet 64th, the basic swing rhythm, just in smaller note values. (The giveaway is the time signature, 12/32, rather than the 24/32 it would be if they were dotted, and in the longer held chords.)

(I whipped this up in Sibelius, these may or may not be the actual notes)


I also can't help hearing a bit of swing in that variation, but I think that's partly because with piano music I've actually played (or at least sight-read) I tend to sort of impose my own interpretation whenever I'm listening, rather than paying attention to whatever the performer is doing, unless it's extremely different. Never heard Uchida or Denk in this either.

[Pat B]

Well, now I feel a bit sheepish. amw is absolutely correct. I apparently didn't look very closely at the score. The 32nds are not dotted. The notes as written add up to 18/32; if they were dotted it would be 24/32. To get it to 12, each 32nd-64th pair must total the duration of a 32nd.

Thank you for the explanation.

Now I have to figure out why some recordings sound dotted (i.e. 3:1 instead of 2:1) to me.

[aquablob]

At the risk of belaboring the point about the Op. 111/II "tied-triplet" rhythm:

That pattern pervades the earlier variations, too, and it's even introduced in the Arietta theme itself. Each successive variation simply halves the note durations, but the basic ONE-(two)-three rhythmic cell is present from the anacrusis that begins the movement. (And doesn't that LONG-short pattern call to mind the agitated dotted rhythms of the introduction to the first movement? Another "transformative" connection might exist between the rumbling trill on low G that ends that introduction and the ethereal trill on a high G near the end of the second movement. Hmm...)

I love Schiff's playing, and I treasure his lectures on the Beethoven piano sonatas, but I've sometimes felt that he comes off as a bit of a snob. His comments on boogie-woogie are a case in point.

That said, I do think it's a mistake to regard the Arietta rhythms as some sort of precursor to jazz. Yes, LONG-short rhythms are characteristic of much jazz and some late ragtime (you won't find them before 1910, and you won't find them in Joplin at all*), and Beethoven's use of the same in Op. 111/II was definitely an innovation. But I submit that the rhythmic energy of the 12/32 variation is properly understood contextually as the short-lived culmination of a process of rhythmic diminution, whereas those aforementioned rhythms in jazz are typically constant and function in a fundamentally different way. Plus, Op. 111 had virtually no influence on early jazz musicians. It's really just a (delightful) coincidence.

*I can, however, think of a couple spots where Joplin uses short-LONG patterns: second strain of "Pine Apple Rag," final strain of "Gladiolus Rag." But by the late 1910s, those now-classic LONG-short rhythms were everywhere, usually notated as dotted figures (not as triplets). A nice example is Zez Confrey's novelty rag "Kitten on the Keys." Confrey, by the way, never "swung" those dotted rhythms in his recordings or piano rolls, though the same can't be said of his "stride"-pianist contemporaries like Fats Waller (who was quite clearly influenced by Confrey—just listen to "Handful of Keys"!).

[Pat B]

I don't think it's belabored at all. As much as I enjoy the recording lists and comparisons, I think it's good to have this sort of discussion too.

Another thing we haven't mentioned here is the syncopation. That is the ragtime element, I think. There's a little bit of syncopation in the previous variation but it's a very different effect.

And the tied triplets do remind me of swing in a way that the same rhythm sometimes doesn't (e.g. "Montagues and Capulets" from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet).

Great point about the relationship between variations and how that differs from jazz. And yet, the vibe is unavoidable for me (and apparently for others). As Schiff says, we can't un-hear all the other music we've heard. So it's hard for me to hear it as the continuation of the pattern and not as something completely different... but I'll try.

[Opus106]

Great point about the relationship between variations and how that differs from jazz.

Yes, thank you,aquariuswb, for that.

And yet, the vibe is unavoidable for me (and apparently for others). As Schiff says, we can't un-hear all the other music we've heard.

Precisely. And I'm not sure if my associations (or anyone else's, for that matter) can be termed as 'wrong', since I have little idea about the fractions being talked about* but the music nevertheless reminded me of what I had heard of Joplin (I can't entirely control the way the neurons fire, you know ). However, I'm not implying that Beethoven, with this variation, set jazz rolling.



*Although I heartily welcome such discussion amidst endless table-pounding

[aquablob]

Yeah, I don't mean that it's wrong of us to form associations based on our listening experiences—that's unavoidable and not necessarily undesirable.

I guess the "precursor to jazz" stuff irks me in the same way that the "so-and-so was ahead of so-and-so's time" stuff irks me. I realize that many people are just waxing poetic when they say those kinds of things, but I think that sometimes folks (and lest I be misunderstood, I'm not insinuating anything about you folks) take that figurative language rather literally. And to those latter people (were they interested in my opinion), I would say that so-and-so is never actually ahead of so-and-so's time, although later artists can certainly A) be influenced by so-and-so, or B) do things reminiscent of what so-and-so did without having been directly influenced by so-and-so. In the case of Op. 111 and ragtime/jazz, it's decidedly B).

I totally know what you mean about the syncopation in that 12/32 variation. I'd even say that just as the Arietta theme already contains kernels of the LONG-short rhythm that pervades the ensuing variations, so does it already contain a kernel of the syncopation that intensifies as the movement unfolds (I'm thinking of the B and D sixteenths at the end of m. 7 that get tied across the bar line). For the left-hand pattern in the first variation, Beethoven takes this "tie" idea and runs with it, tying the third note in each "triplet" to the first in the next, both within and across measures.

And then he does something really strange in the second half of the first variation: in m. 26, he breaks the LONG-short regularity in the right hand in such a way that confuses your ear (or my ear, at least) into feeling the rhythm "early" by one sixteenth, yet also in a way such that I'm not really sure if that's what's actually just happened. I feel disoriented until the downbeat of m. 29, where the B-D dyad in the right hand is unexpectedly sounded a third consecutive time, "regaining" ("reclaiming"?) that "lost" beat. That's when the reassuring LONG-short flow returns, and everything is normal again. There's something beautifully unsettling about those measures. I hear them as a glimpse of trouble in paradise, a sort of metrical high-wire act made all the more dramatic by a crescendo and some slithery chromaticism. This strange new something is retained and developed in the next two variations.

Incidentally, Beethoven does something quite similar in the first movement of Op. 101 during the transition from the exposition to the development: we "lose" a beat with the syncopation beginning at m. 29, and we "regain" it at m. 35, again with an unexpectedly reiterated dyad in the right hand. The overall effect is quite different here (gentle diatonic cadential gestures over a static tonic pedal, all at a steady piano), but the rhythmic technique is more or less the same. In both cases, if you're tapping your foot along, everything's copacetic once the process has finished. For that reason, I prefer recordings that maintain a steady tempo for those kinds of rhythmically "shifty" passages, which aren't terribly uncommon in Beethoven's oeuvre. There's a time and place for rubato, but it's elsewhere and elsewhen, methinks. Don't get me started on Pletnev's "Eroica" 

[amw]

Now I have to figure out why some recordings sound dotted (i.e. 3:1 instead of 2:1) to me.

I wonder if to some extent it's pianists trying to make it sound not like jazz—i.e. they can't un-hear the swing rhythms in the music as written, so they overdot to make it sound more "classical".

Which I imagine is similar to the problems around the interpretation of notes inégales (one of which—not sure if it's the most common—is a consistent long-short inequality similar to swing or the Arietta). Following an editorial suggestion in one of the editions of the Well-Tempered Clavier I tried out the G-sharp minor prelude from Book I that way; it sounded not bad, but still had too much of the Modern Jazz Quartet about it, and I prefer to hear it "straight" even if it's less historically accurate.

I totally know what you mean about the syncopation in that 12/32 variation. I'd even say that just as the Arietta theme already contains kernels of the LONG-short rhythm that pervades the ensuing variations, so does it already contain a kernel of the syncopation that intensifies as the movement unfolds (I'm thinking of the B and D sixteenths at the end of m. 7 that get tied across the bar line). For the left-hand pattern in the first variation, Beethoven takes this "tie" idea and runs with it, tying the third note in each "triplet" to the first in the next, both within and across measures.

And then he does something really strange in the second half of the first variation: in m. 26, he breaks the LONG-short regularity in the right hand in such a way that confuses your ear (or my ear, at least) into feeling the rhythm "early" by one sixteenth, yet also in a way such that I'm not really sure if that's what's actually just happened. I feel disoriented until the downbeat of m. 29, where the B-D dyad in the right hand is unexpectedly sounded a third consecutive time, "regaining" ("reclaiming"?) that "lost" beat. That's when the reassuring LONG-short flow returns, and everything is normal again. There's something beautifully unsettling about those measures. I hear them as a glimpse of trouble in paradise, a sort of metrical high-wire act made all the more dramatic by a crescendo and some slithery chromaticism. This strange new something is retained and developed in the next two variations.

Incidentally, Beethoven does something quite similar in the first movement of Op. 101 during the transition from the exposition to the development: we "lose" a beat with the syncopation beginning at m. 29, and we "regain" it at m. 35, again with an unexpectedly reiterated dyad in the right hand. The overall effect is quite different here (gentle diatonic cadential gestures over a static tonic pedal, all at a steady piano), but the rhythmic technique is more or less the same. In both cases, if you're tapping your foot along, everything's copacetic once the process has finished. For that reason, I prefer recordings that maintain a steady tempo for those kinds of rhythmically "shifty" passages, which aren't terribly uncommon in Beethoven's oeuvre. There's a time and place for rubato, but it's elsewhere and elsewhen, methinks. Don't get me started on Pletnev's "Eroica" 

These sorts of rhythmic shifts are indeed pretty common in Beethoven, but concentrated mostly in the later part of his output, I think. (There's also the whole phrasing of the scherzo of Op. 110 and a number of passages in Op. 127 and 135 that come to mind off the top of my head.) It's probably an oversimplification to say that the increased interest in this kind of rhythmic fluidity, both local and large-scale, and decreased interest in dramatic contrast and sonata form is the hallmark of the late style, since there are pieces like the Ninth Symphony that are practically throwbacks to "middle Beethoven" by that standard (and middle Beethoven pieces that are "ahead of their time" ) but these kinds of rhythmic preoccupations do seem to become increasingly important right up to a piece like Op. 135 whose (not inconsiderable) appeal derives in large part from subtle shifts in rhythm, phrasing and periodicity. Or sometimes not very subtle. (That scherzo...) And then of course Schumann took these sort of rhythmic shifts to a whole new level but we're getting a bit far from Op. 111 now.

[aquablob]

I wonder if to some extent it's pianists trying to make it sound not like jazz—i.e. they can't un-hear the swing rhythms in the music as written, so they overdot to make it sound more "classical".

This has crossed my mind, too.