|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Beethoven a la Brendel
| Article
# : |
10151 |
|
|
Section : |
THE ARTS
|
| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1993 |
1,493 Words |
| Author
: |
Theodore W. Libbey, Jr.
Theodore W. Libbey, Jr., formerly the senior editor of Musical
America, contributes regularly to national publications and is
currently at work on a selective guide to classical music on
compact discs. |
Nowhere are Beethoven's gifts as a composer greater, or more apparent, than in his sonatas for the piano. They contain what was from the start his most personal musical expression: The piano was his instrument, and he was constantly pushing its capacities--particularly its range and dynamic gradations--to the limit. Even when he could no longer hear the results, he continued to explore the instrument's possibilities, and had it not been for his deafness, he undoubtedly would have remained in later years the virtuoso interpreter of his own works that he was as a young man. While it may seem ironic that Beethoven was both a brilliant improviser and a composer who habitually sketched and re-sketched his ideas before committing them to a work, these two elements--the spontaneous and the structured--characterize all of his music for the piano, and they give his sonatas a strength and vitality unparalleled in the keyboard literature.
In his life Beethoven had his share of acquaintances--a handful of patrons and princes, a few loyal supporters, and at least one "immortal beloved." But the closest thing he had to a lifelong friend was the piano. He was already on intimate terms with it when he made his way to Vienna in 1792 to "receive the spirit of Mozart from Haydn's hands," as Count Waldstein put it, and in little time the instrument provided him with an entry into the salons of the Viennese nobility. It served thereafter as his introduction to the concert-going public, and it helped launch his career as a composer. In fact, of Beethoven's first twenty-eight opuses, twenty involved the piano in one way or another.
In the middle and later years of Beethoven's career, the piano sonatas served as a laboratory in which he could experiment with form and try out new ideas. Procedures first attempted in them were then applied in the symphonies and string quartets. For all these reasons, to say nothing of the extraordinarily rich content and expressiveness, the piano sonatas of Beethoven constitute one of the most important bodies of work in music literature. Understandably, they are open to many different interpretations. Each generation since Beethoven's time has found significance in them, but no one interpreter has captured, or will ever capture, all that is contained within them. That is why the sonatas are subject to constant study and reinterpretation by the pianists who play them, and why one of the greatest of all Beethovenians before the public today, Alfred Brendel, is at them again.
Keen Insight
Over the years, Brendel has had
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
