‘Holy ground for all music lovers’ wrote the great German critic Joachim Kaiser about this sonata, and I fully agree. The opening movement alone is a wonder of inspiration beyond belief - a melody as natural as breathing, lovingly spun into a delicate form akin to a flower covered in morning’s dew, yet reflecting a wealth of complex emotions.
The beautiful opening phrase conceals an unexpected fact: Beethoven starts the sonata off-key, on the dominant (E major). This start in medias res contributes to the openness and questioning character of many of the phrases, and later in the movement Beethoven develops this idea, systematically avoiding a resolution into the home key of A major. This turns out to be part of the sonata’s design - Beethoven masterfully builds up a subconscious need for a resolution throughout the movements and manages to delay the appearance of a strong A major until much later in the sonata - the opening of the finale.
The first movement does achieve an ethereally light resolution at its end, and is followed by a march which functions as a brusque awakening from the wonderful dream. It’s robust, concrete and extremely present, contrasting the open questions of the first movement with its dotted rhythms and full-bodied sound, its vitality and assuredness.The trio exemplifies Beethoven’s increasing interest in polyphonic writing (which was hinted at already in the first movement (e.g. 0:52) and the march proper. It is a canon at the octave, first with the left hand following the right, and then the two switching places. The effect is of relaxed, pastoral simplicity - a very welcome change after the bustle of the march - though Beethoven’s strict following of the canon rules does lead to some unusual-sounding passages (8:13).
A slow movement of heartbreaking tenderness serves as the introduction to the finale. Beethoven writes ‘sehnsuchtsvoll’ - ‘filled with yearning’, the yearning embodied in the expressive melodic figure of the turn (10:56) and the suspended chords (11:06). Moreover, the music is to be played using the left pedal, robbing the sound of brilliance, and introducing a world of hollow pain from the very first, once again off-key chord. The pain grows stronger throughout the movement, reaching a peak at 12:18, as the turn figure is repeated again and again over a chain of descending diminished seventh chords. This subsides, and from its echoes an unexpected memory arises - the opening phrases of the sonata, like a vision of spring and warmth in the middle of winter. The memory, again unexpectedly, grows more and more corporeal, finally bursting into an energetic trill, which together with a very decisive left hand ushers in the finale with its long-expected resolution into our home key of A major.
The finale for me is the essence of summer - bright and energetic, genuinely carefree and full of laughter. It’s down-to-earth and self-assured, but in an easy-going way, contrasting with the tense, on-the-edge presence of the second movement. It really feels like the answer to all the questions which the preceding movements posed - which makes its development section that much more surprising. Beethoven’s interest in polyphony receives a much more substantial expression here, as he writes a full-fledged fugue in four voices, transforming the cheerful opening motif into something much more suspenseful and even sinister, after he transposes it to the depths of the keyboard (16:58).
The fugue, brilliantly written and fiendishly uncomfortable to play, culminates in a truly epic buildup which deserves a special mention. Throughout his life, Beethoven was pushing against the boundaries of the keyboard. His defiance at the limited range is so apparent that you can often track the keyboard’s development by checking the highest note of a Beethoven piece at any particular point; more often than not, it would match the highest note available to him at that time. The upper end of the keyboard gained an entire octave throughout his lifetime, but the bass had only just started expanding downwards around the time of Op. 101. And so, Beethoven finally allowed himself to add one extra note (!) - the E - to the bass range. This note, like an exotic ingredient, was sparingly added at a strategically crucial point in the finale’s fugue - the very end (18:38), supporting a double augmentation of the fugue’s theme hammered out in fortissimo, which serves not only as the climax of the finale, but, by extension, of the entire sonata. This passage brings to a glorious resolution the E major chord which hangs open in the air from the first bars of the sonata, thus completing Beethoven’s long game plan of this work.
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Beethoven 32 - Over the course of 2020, I have learned and filmed all 32 Beethoven sonatas. Subscribe to this channel or visit beethoven32.com to follow the project.
Boris Giltburg, piano
Filmed by Stewart French
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