Last night at Davies Symphony Hall András Schiff concluded his
two-year eight-concert cycle of the complete piano sonatas of Ludwig van
Beethoven with the last three sonatas in the set. The opus numbers of
these works are consecutive (109, 110, 111). They were composed between
1820 and 1822, placing them in the final decade of Beethoven's life.
In his notes for the program book, Michael Steinberg called these three
works a triptych; but I wonder if Beethoven thought of them this way.
Had they been conceived as a unit, I would have thought that they would
have shared a common dedication (if not opus number, like the three
sonatas collected respectively under Opus 2 and Opus 10). However, Opus
110 lacks any dedication, while Opus 109 is dedicated to Maximiliane
Brentano (whom, as I had previously mentioned,
Beethoven had taught composition eight years earlier as a nine-year-old
girl), while Opus 111 is dedicated to the Archduke Rudolph, also one of
Beethoven's composition students, to whom the Opus 73 "Emperor" piano
concerto was dedicated (and the "Archduke" of the Opus 97 piano trio).
Thus, these sonatas are less a triptych than they are three experiments
in departing from the conventions of the piano sonata, sharing certain
attributes but each strikingly unique in its own way.
None of
these sonatas follows the usual three-movement or four-movement
structure associated with the form; and any presence of the "sonata
form" movement is relatively subtlety concealed. Both Opus 109 and Opus
111 concluded with elaborate variations on an extended theme, pushing
the sense of a prolonged duration even further than it had been pushed in the third movement of the "Archduke" trio. The conclusion of Opus 110 goes back to the fugal process of Opus 106,
but with a much tighter structure, a recitative "interruption," and a
wild roller-coaster ride beginning with an inversion of the theme and
pulling out just about every contrapuntal device while going out in a
blaze of glory.
The uniqueness of the three sonatas has less to do
with their virtuoso demands, however, and more to do with their
introspective nature. Most of the high energy is concentrated in the
final movement of Opus 110 and the opening movement of Opus 111. For
the most part, however, the mood is reflective and thus well served by
the theme-and-variations movements. Opus 109 breaks the ground, so to
speak, exploring the potential of mining variations from an extended
theme. Opus 111 then works the ground that has been broken, weaving
fabrics as rich in counterpoint as those of the Opus 106 and Opus 110
fugues but now in the service of variation. Most important, however, is
that, after all the explorations, both sets of variations return to the
quiet and meditative theme upon which each has been based. These three
sonatas show Beethoven the "reflective practitioner" in the best light, each giving its own voice to the uniqueness and profundity of the composer's reflections.
By
taking a disciplined approach to the music as Beethoven wrote it,
Schiff made sure that Beethoven's "voice" behind these three sonatas was
the center of attention. Each of these sonatas can be turned into its
own "advertisement" for the pianist's virtuosity (which is not to say
that Beethoven avoided exploring his own virtuosity). Schiff's
performance made it clear that he wanted us to come to hear Beethoven,
rather than Schiff. When it was a matter of a particular "message"
depending on a subtle detail, he made sure that the detail did not get
lost in the wash of other notes. When it was a matter of the "overall
experience," he paced that experience to facilitate taking it in as a
whole. It is hard to imagine Beethoven being better served than he was
last night, whatever ups and downs the other concerts in the cycle may
have displayed.
The final touch, in a way, was Schiff's decision
to pass on any encore. He wanted Opus 111 to be the last word of the
evening. While he had made many innovative encore decisions for the
preceding seven recitals, last night he left the "sense of an ending"
(as Frank Kermode put it) in Beethoven's hands.
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