JOnaTHan BiSSBeeTHOven

THe cOMpleTe

pianO SOnaTaS

SepTeMBeR 21–22, 2019 OcTOBeR 12–13, 2019 DeceMBeR 15, 2019MaRcH 7–8, 2020 HeRTz Hall

BENJAMIN EALOVEGA

Jonathan  Biss (piano) is a world-renowned pianist who channels his deep musical curiosityinto performances and projects in the concerthall and beyond. in addition to performing withtoday’s leading orchestras, he continues to ex-pand his reputation as a teacher, musical thinker,and one of the great Beethoven interpreters ofour time. Biss was recently named co-artistic director alongside Mitsuko Uchida at the Marl -boro Music Festival, where he has spent 13 sum-mers. He also leads a massive open online course(MOOc) via coursera, which has reached morethan 150,000 people from nearly every countryin the world. Biss has written extensively aboutthe music he plays, and has authored three e-books, including Bee thoven’s Shadow, the firstKindle Single written by a classical musician,published by Rosetta Books in 2011.

For more than a decade, he has fully im-mersed himself in the music of Beethoven, exploring the composer’s works and musicalthought through a wide variety of projects, sev-eral of which culminate in 2019–20. Biss’ recitalrepertoire this season is almost exclusively focused on the Beethoven piano sonatas, withcom plete cycles here at Uc Berkeley, as well as at london’s Wigmore Hall and the McKnightcenter for the performing arts at OklahomaState University. He also performs select sonatasin recital and mini-cycles around the UnitedStates, including in philadelphia, new York,Washington (Dc), and Seattle, as well as abroadin Rome, Budapest, Sydney, and Melbourne.

in 2011, Biss began a journey to record thecomposer’s 32 piano sonatas; the project con-cludes this fall with the ninth and final volume,to be released on Orchid classics. e final twosets of lessons in his coursera lecture series,Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, will be re-leased in September and January, at which timeall the sonatas will have been examined.

Biss also surveys Beethoven’s five piano concertos in his Beethoven/5 commissioningproject, which pairs each concerto with a newconcerto composed in response. launched in2015 in partnership with lead commissioner the St. paul chamber Orchestra, the project has led to world premieres by Timo andres, SallyBeamish, Salvatore Sciarrino, and caroline

Shaw. is season, Biss premieres Brett Dean’sGneixendorfer Musik with the Swedish RadioSymphony Orchestra, performed alongside Bee -thoven’s Emperor concerto. He then brings thenew commission to the Dresden philhar monic,Melbourne Symphony Orches tra, and poland’sWrocław philharmonic. additionally, he per-forms the Emperor with orchestras worldwide,including with the curtis Symphony Orchestraled by Osmo vänskä at carnegie Hall and phila -delphia’s Kimmel center as part of a seven-cityeast coast tour.

Biss’ projects represent his complete approachto music-making and connecting his audienceto his own passion for the music. previous proj-ects have included an exploration of composers’“late Style” in various concert pro grams at car -ne gie Hall, the Barbican centre, philadelphiachamber Music Society, and San Francisco per -formances. He also published the Kindle SingleCoda on the topic. Schumann: Under the Influ -ence was a 30-concert exploration of the com-poser’s role in music history, for which Biss alsorecorded Schumann and Dvořák piano quintetswith the elias String Quartet and wrote A PianistUnder the Influence.

Biss represents the third generation in a fam-ily of professional musicians that includes hisgrandmother Raya Garbousova, one of the firstwell-known female cellists (for whom SamuelBarber composed his cello concerto), and his parents, violinist Miriam Fried and violist/violinist paul Biss. Growing up surrounded bymusic, Biss began his piano studies at age six,and his first musical collaborations were with his mother and father. He studied with evelyneBrancart at indiana University and with leonFleisher at the curtis institute of Music, wherehe is now on the faculty and holds the neubauerFamily chair in piano Studies. Biss has been recognized with numerous honors, including lin coln center’s Martin e. Segal award, anavery Fisher career Grant, the 2003 Borletti-Buitoni Trust award, and the 2002 GilmoreYoung artist award.

Exclusive Management for Jonathan BissOpus 3 artists, 470 park avenue South, 9th Floor north, new York, nY 10016

ABOUT THE ARTIST

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The word “wonderment” goes a long way towards conveying my own feel-ings about Beethoven’s music. it wasthe dominant sensation when i first

heard Serkin’s Appassionata on a cassette tapein the car, at age 9. it was again at the forefrontwhen i discovered the Grosse Fuge, a year or twolater, in a recording by the Budapest Quartet. (ican remember, vividly, that my immediate re-action was that the piece was totally incompre-hensible, and that i had to hear it again, rightaway; years later, aer countless hearings, andeven a number of performances of Beethoven’sown arrangement of the piece for piano four-hands, it seems only slightly more comprehen-sible, and remains as irresistible as ever.) and itwas an actual sensation, felt in my whole body,when i had that first encounter with the com-plete cycle of piano sonatas at age 13.

ose were all listening experiences. When i am the one playing—that is to say, when myrelationship to the music becomes tactile and is complicated by questions of self-expression—the sensation becomes exponentially morepowerful. is sort of awe, while a very intensething to live with, is not in any way negative; infact, it is probably essential, given my convic-tion that the search for something unreachableis part of this music’s expressive Dna. But atthe same time, it creates a very practical diffi-

culty: once you come to the conclusion thatsomething is unreachable, how—and when—do you decide to reach for it? if one is, by definition, never really ready to play all the Bee thoven sonatas, when is the moment to say,“ready or not, here i come?”

in trying to answer this troublesome ques-tion, i again resort to a negative definition: it may be impossible to know that you are readyto take on such a project, but it is emphaticallypossible to know that you aren’t ready. For mostof my life—probably since [a] peabody cycle—i’ve known that i’ve wanted to play the 32 Bee -thoven sonatas. What i’ve known, to be moreprecise, is that this body of music is more im-portant to me than just about any other, andthat i want—feel compelled—to spend my life interrogating it. and while the open-endedstudy of music can be a wonderful, wonderfulthing, one’s relationship with a piece invariablytakes on new dimensions aer public per-formance. ere are probably many reasons forthis—again, there is the tactile aspect of music-making, so vital to an instrumentalist, whichwill always receive more emphasis when a per-formance looms—but above all it is becausethese works exist to be communicated, and thusthere are things to be known about them thatone simply cannot know without experiencingthat communication. and so, when a concert

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in Search of SomethingUnreachableby Jonathan Biss

presenter in a major american city asked me,aged 23, to play the 32 sonatas, i should havebeen thrilled. and in fairness, i was sort ofthrilled. at the same time, though, i was ab-solutely plagued with doubt. So plagued thatnothing—not putting off the start of the proj-ect for three years, or spreading the concertsover a longer period—could make me feel thatthe enormous fear i felt was unjustified. 

Some of the sources of the fear were proba-bly intangible, but others were plenty tangible.First of all, at that point i’d played no more than10 of the sonatas, including just one of the lastfive. (While it would be wrong to say that theearlier works are easier—on a purely physicallevel, for one, some of them are enormously uncomfortable to play—the late sonatas arecomposed in a language, or languages, so unprece dented, unique, and seemingly inscru -table, that coming to terms with them seems tome a greater bridge to be crossed.) While i’d al-ways assumed—to whatever extent i’d thoughtit through—that when i got around to per-forming the whole cycle there would be certainsonatas i’d still need to learn, making the leapwhen i still had 22 sonatas to go seemed to in-volve a degree of hubris.

a second reason, closely related to but ulti-mately independent from the first, is that experience has taught me that the physical andmental preparation of a piece of music can takeyou only so far: putting the piece away for atime, letting it rest while the mind and fingersare occupied with other things, oen leads tomore development than the actual, quantifiablework does. Time and time again, i’ve struggledwith something—the shape of a phrase, thehandling of a transition—in a work that is newto me, searched and searched for a solution thatseemed organic, and found that nothing i triedsounded natural—nothing passed the “right-ness” test. But then, aer leaving the piece for a period of several months, sometimes reallynot even thinking about it at all, the same pas-sage has somehow, through some kind of os-mosis, resolved itself, and no longer poses a question. (Or rather, [as i learned listening toartur Schnabel,] having answered one ques-tion, it now poses a new one.) it can be frus-trating knowing that this process has noshortcuts, but ultimately it has led me to the

conclusion that i simply should not perform awork immediately aer learning it; much betterto let it percolate first, away from the pressur-ized atmosphere of the concert hall, whichtends to force the performer to fall back onwhat works—even if it doesn’t work too well.and if i had accepted that offer when i was 23,there would have been no way around the real-ity that i would need to play many of thesonatas immediately aer learning them.

en there was a third reason, which goesbeyond the Beethoven sonatas themselves:performing the cycle when i still had so manysonatas to learn would have meant a degree ofimmersion in that music so extreme, it wouldhave all but excluded the possibility of mylearning anything else at a time in my life wheni should have been musically omnivorous. isis partially, of course, a question of my musicaldevelopment at large: it would have been a very bad decision to have taken on the completeBeethoven sonatas and in the process movedaway from other music—the Mozart concerti,or Schumann’s solo works, for example—whichwas arguably as important to me, and whichwould become vastly more difficult to learn if i postponed it too long. But it also played di-rectly into the question of my readiness to takeon the project itself. Beethoven’s music is so exceedingly easy to program in part because it represents such a watershed in the history ofmusic: To a remarkable extent, all the musicthat precedes it (certainly in the classical era)seems to be leading up to it, and all the musicthat has come since exists in response. Haydn’swill to surprise, to invent, and Mozart’s way of finding expressive possibilities everywhere(how different they are from one another!) areamong the roots of Beethoven’s music, whichgrows from them in ways neither prior mastercould have envisioned. and one would have to go outside the central european tradition to find music written aer 1827 that does notgrapple with the essential aspects of Beethoven’smusic—the fierce independence; the architec-tural asymmetry, with enormous works resist-ing any resolution until their final movements;the harmonic boldness, which precipitated theslow collapse of the tonal system; the grit. andeven farther afield, he looms large: With musicas various as Kirchner and Kurtág, Janác̆ek and

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Takemitsu, he might not be central, but onequality or another of the music points backwardtoward him; he is always in the room. and so,deciding to spend the bulk of several years of my life with Beethoven, without having ad-dressed such a huge volume of great music withso much to say about him, seemed not only in-advisable, but irresponsible. 

Seven years later, what has changed? i willmake this series of recordings over a nine-yearperiod, which naturally makes the prospectsomewhat less daunting. and a significant sideeffect of this pacing is that my relationship withBeethoven while i am preparing the recordingswill be immersive but not exclusive; his music

amount of Beethoven i’ve played beyond justthe sonatas (many other isolated solo works; all of the concerti; most of the chamber music),and the time i’ve spent listening to and studyingthe symphonies and, especially, the string quar-tets. e latter, even more than the sonatas,oen seem to me to be Beethoven’s most per-sonal statements, and perhaps because they arewritten for instruments Beethoven did not havea physical relationship with, it is in these piecesthat earthly concerns—practicality for the player,comprehensibility for the listener—seem fur-thest from his mind, freeing him to write bothsome of his most consoling and his most har-rowing music. e late quartets in particular

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Once you come to the conclusion that somethingis unreachable, how—and when—do you decideto reach for it?

—Jonathan Biss

will exist not in a vacuum, but in conversationwith his predecessors and followers (or rather,precedents and consequents). Still, my decisionto dive into this undertaking when i could notbring myself to commit to it when it was offeredto me, relatively recently, on a plate represents a significant shi. particularly as what i amcommitting to now is not just performances of the sonatas, but recordings—recording…beingthe most fraught, disorienting process in a mu-sician’s life.

First, the straightforward answers: e 10sonatas i’d played as of 2004 have now become18, drawn from all periods of Beethoven’s compositional career. While it is true that eachsonata poses decidedly unique questions andproblems—to refer to the Beethoven sonatas as a “body of music” is misleading, given the extent to which each sonata is a self-containedemotional universe—the percentage of thismusic i’ve now played makes me feel that i amat least reasonably well acquainted with both hismusical personality and his ever-evolving mu-sical language. is feeling is bolstered by the

oen seem to be beyond human understand-ing, and yet to engage with them is to feel thatyou know Beethoven, somehow.

and in these past seven years, i also learnedplenty of other music, from Bach and Handelto new works—in several cases, ones composedspecifically for me, which gave me invaluableinsight into the creative process from which i, as an interpreter, am one enormous degree removed—and of course, a vast quantity in between the two. i learned a huge amount ofMozart, which taught me about Beethoven notthrough their similarities but through theirstaggering differences. in short: Mozart, a the-atrical composer if there ever was one, writesabout the real world; Beethoven writes about an idealized world. Beethoven’s admiration forMozart was enormous, which makes it all themore interesting that the drama of his music isdrawn from such utterly different sources thanMozart’s. While Mozart’s music so oen suggestsconversation, Beethoven’s is most oen writtenin one immensely strong voice. Where Mozart’stemperament is quicksilver, Beetho ven’s is stead-

Beethoven’s last grand piano,built by the Viennese piano manufacturer Conrad Graf, who placed the instrument atBeethoven's disposal in January1826. Beethovenhaus Baden has embarked on an ambitiousproject to restore the instrumentto its original glory.

Beethoven’s French Erard piano, used by the composeraer 1803. It has four pedals:lute-stop, sustaining, sourdine,and una corda.

fast. and where Mozart is so oen willing to|interrupt the narrative of a work if inspirationtakes him in a different direction, Bee thoven’smusic is nearly always relentlessly argued, neverstraying significantly from the business of re-solving the central questions it poses.

i learned a great deal of Schubert, and wasrepeatedly struck by the way this musical genius with a personality so fundamentally dif-ferent from Beethoven’s was still profoundly influenced by him. ere are some very specificinstances of this debt—the last movement ofSchubert’s Sonata in a major, D. 959 hews fartoo closely to the finale of Beethoven’s Op. 31,no. 1, in form and even in specific gestures, forit to be an accident—but it is the monumen-tality and the individualism Schubert pursued in his late works that really show what the ex-ample of Beethoven provided him with. ematerial is utterly different in character, and theuse of the material is no more similar—whereBee thoven develops and insists, Schubert wan-ders and dreams—but the breadth of Schubert’svision and the nerve he needed to realize itshow beyond doubt how closely he had studiedBeethoven.

i learned much of Schumann’s piano music,and found that even German music’s most orig-inal and unanticipated voice is in conversationwith Beethoven. e poetry, the ear for detailboth bizarre and exquisite, and the talent forglorious non sequitur are all Schumann’s own,but the sense of striving and the use of music as diary—as a means of working through life’sterrors and dissatisfactions—are straight out of Beethoven. i played many of Brahms’ greatworks, and was moved by the obviously crush-ing weight that this master, born six years aerBeethoven’s death, felt in the form of the need tobe Beethoven, and the subsequent difficulty hehad merely being his own, great, self. (Brahmsmay have carried this burden more heavily thanothers, but Beethoven cast the same shadowover the entire 19th century.) Furthermore, itwas through Brahms that i discovered some-thing equally true of Beethoven: that the pres-ence of rigor is in no way an impediment to theexpression of passion, and that the cra of com-position, while no substitute for inspiration, isabsolutely essential if the inspiration is to haveany impact at all. 

i learned the works of Schoenberg and hiscontemporaries, and felt more strongly all thetime that while Beethoven never could haveimagined this music, it was a natural conse-quence of the trail he blazed. Schoenberg spokeabout his need to “emancipate” dissonance withthe 12-tone system he built, and Beethoven’smusic, in its daring, so destabilized the diatonicsystem that the road toward atonality was in asense already paved by the time he wrote his lastworks. and of course, Schoenberg’s attempt tocreate an entirely new language, which he didwith tremendous fanfare and, one can now say,six decades aer his death, limited success,makes Beethoven’s late period seem more awe-inspiring than ever. For where Schoenberg’s se-rial works juxtapose passages of great nostalgicbeauty with music that is both leaden and ob-viously “constructed,” Beethoven’s late style,while no less linguistically removed from allthat came before it, is seamless enough to ac-commodate some of the most profound state-ments of western civilization. To play one ofSchoenberg’s piano works directly before Bee -thoven’s Op. 109—as i’ve done on a number ofoccasions—is to make the rather astonishingdiscovery that the Beethoven is not only moresatisfying, but more daring and modern thanthe Schoenberg. e latter’s music is oen com-plex, but it is a complexity that one can workthrough; the mystery of Beethoven remains inexplicable. 

it’s not just that my study of all of this musicfelt somehow related to Beethoven—in manycases, it seemed to be leading me to him. as icould feel the weight of the preoccupation thesegiants had with Beethoven, my own preoccu-pation became increasingly intense. e Bee -tho ven sonatas, always the holy grail as far as i was concerned, gradually became somethingelse as well: the orbit around which my otherfascinations moved. e more i widened mymusical sphere, the more central he seemed. i repeat: He was always in the room.

—excerpted from the Kindle eBookBeethoven’s Shadow by Jonathan Biss

Portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820

eight years ago, in an article called“Beethoven’s Guide to Being Human,”i made the case for Beethoven’s powerto fill his audience with optimism, his

capacity to convince a listener that good willprevail. is, i admit, reduces my argument toits most simplistic components. even back then,few would have believed the victories celebratedat the end of Beethoven’s Fih and ninth sym-phonies, or his opera Fidelio, could last beyondthe final curtain. But how much has happenedin these eight years. Today, when national andworld events demand we re-examine and getmore serious about what “being human” means,Beethoven can help.

ese days we can be forgiven for imagin-ing we live in a uniquely unstable world, whereunwelcome news is dismissed as fabrication,facts possess alternatives, and even nature’s lawsare questioned. But stability is always an illu-sion, as Beethoven knew, personally and polit-ically. imagine: a 31-year-old composer loseshis hearing—“the one sense,” he confessed,“which ought to be more perfect in me thanothers.” imagine Beethoven’s vienna, where thefreedoms le intact by napoleon’s army wereundercut by the austrians themselves. emperorFranz ii, his ear fine-tuned by the French Revo -lution, heard seditious whispers everywhere,sent his spies to root out enemies of the people,

Travels withBeethovenby larry Rothe

and abolished the free press he abhorred.Beethoven tamed such personal and social ca-tastrophes. Facing deafness, he rejected suicideas an option: “it was only my art that held meback. it seemed to me impossible to leave theworld until i had brought forth all that i felt waswithin me.” He reassembled his inner resources,intent on changing things. Beethoven (writeshis biographer Maynard Solomon) “was pre-pared to furnish [vienna] with a model of heroism as well as beauty during an age of revo lu tion and destruction and to hold out the image of an era of reconciliations and free-dom to come.” He has done the same for thegenerations since. He translated his inner powers into music of virtually uncontained aspiration, music that urges us to do as he did:continue, and reject despair. Beethoven’s mes-sage is optimism, optimism hard-won but ever-present and waiting to be captured: a constant,a kind of stability.

A World in 32 PiecesFortunately for the cal performances audience,Beethoven is a focal point of this season as wecelebrate the 250th anniversary of his birth. Youwill hear orchestral works and chamber music(see a listing of concerts featuring music byBeethoven on page 12). But for the full Bee -thoven immersion, pianist Jonathan Biss appears in seven recitals. Between September2019 and March 2020, Biss performs the com-plete cycle of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas.

Beethoven began composing piano sona -tas early in his career and continued writingthem to the end. as you might expect, given thespan of years between the first and last of thesecreations, they encompass an artistic and emo-tional terrain of varied contours, ranging fromlighthearted melody to cosmic statements atmusic’s outer limits. if you think of the sonatasas a 32-piece jigsaw puzzle that, completed,forms an image of the world, you get some ideaof what’s in store.

Jonathan Biss, who has spoken of Bee tho -ven’s sonatas as “a private diary of a genius,” isnearing the end of a nine-year project of record-ing the Beethoven sonatas, with the final vol-ume scheduled for release in november. Biss isan eloquent writer, and with disarming candor

he talks about his relationship with this musicin Beethoven’s Shadow, an extended essay avail-able as a Kindle e-book (but not in a print edi-tion) through amazon.com. (an excerpt fromBiss’ writing begins on page 3.) in this personalaccount Biss covers a broad territory—his ear-liest experiences with Beethoven, his changingreactions over the years to the AppassionataSonata, the opportunities and problems ofrecording, the challenges and assurances Bee -tho ven offers a listener.

A Better World?count me among the multitude for whomBeethoven opened a world. His work is a pointof entry and defines why we listen to “classical”music. compared to him, every other com-poser comes up short if what we’re looking foris urgency and a persistent sense of necessity. in the words of British music critic nevillecardus: “Beethoven most times was a rebel,beating his fist against the mortal limitations of music. He oen wanted to say things whichmusic couldn’t contain, let alone express….at is why there are so many repeated notesand chords in Beethoven, violent sforzandiwhich are symbols of protest. Repeated notes in music, when they are strenuous and weight-ily harmonized, usually mean that a composerhas something on his mind. He, at any rate, isnot just trying to write a melody.”

Beethoven molds our sense of what we expect music to offer. no one before him hadgiven instrumental music such narrative power,and everyone aer him attempted to emulatehis storytelling command. His genius was to in-fuse his music with psychological scenarios, tojoin an almost operatic concept of drama withmusic not limited by the words that any char-acters sing. e Fih Symphony is the most obvious example of this. Tchaikovsky, whoclaimed his own Fourth Symphony was “a re-flection” of Beethoven’s Fih, wrote that theFih was based on a program “so clear thatthere cannot be the smallest difference of opin-ion as to its meaning.”

at plot, depicting a movement fromstruggle to victory, darkness to light, suggeststhat abstract music possesses an ethical com-ponent. Which is not to say that music makes

us better people. at claim disintegrates inlight of history’s many bad-guy music lovers.But abstract music, because it is abstract, isopen to interpretation. lacking the limits andspecifics that words would impose on them,Beethoven’s unconstrained dramas engage theimagination, enlisting our gut responses to hisscenarios, enabling us to grasp his messages byunderstanding our own reactions to him. inthis, Beethoven tells us to value our own emo-tions. at may not make us better, but it cer-tainly can make us happy.

e Effort and the Payoffif Beethoven can open a wider world for listen-ers, the door to that world is perhaps accessedmost easily through his symphonies. Besidesthe large and insistent gestures delivered by anorchestra—try ignoring those—we encountertheater in every Beethoven symphony: risingand falling action and climaxes, all delivered inunforgettable lines.

e symphonies tell only a fraction of the story. Big public statements can conveytheir messages with blunt power, but Bee tho -ven explored most deeply in more intimateforms, especially his piano sonatas and stringquartets. in those genres, particularly in the lateworks, he experimented with structure and devised new ways to communicate—Biss haswritten of “the perpetual innovation which isone of the most significant aspects of Beetho -ven’s output.” Beethoven ignores limits. into hismusic he loads a multitude of beauties andcomplexities, and he trusts our anticipationsand memories of both—he trusts our close lis-tening—to ensure that his compositions willtranscend their formal borders. He expandsmusic’s capabilities.

Beethoven, says Jonathan Biss, “writesabout an idealized world.” e pianist speaks of the “wonderment” he finds in Beethoven’ssonatas, as though “the search for somethingunreachable is part of the music’s expressiveDna.” Beethoven invested huge effort in thatsearch, and to be true to the music, the artistmust convey that effort. as Biss writes, “With -out the sense that blood, sweat and tears wereinvolved, a performance simply will not soundlike Beethoven.”

Discovering the Sonataseven in the early sonatas you hear a new voice.listen to no. 2. neither Haydn nor Mozartwrote anything so highly spiced, or so delight-fully narcissistic. its self-love dictates its struc-ture: because Beethoven can’t let go the principaltheme of his third movement, it becomes partof the finale. Beethoven aims at more than whatmusic before him could embrace, and he car-ried that aim to extremes in the late sonatas. Forexample: in the second movement of the two-movement Op. 111 Sonata, the last of the 32, we never know where he is leading. He asks thatthis movement be played in a “simple and song-like” way, yet no line of melody goes in a direc-tion we expect. at the same time, he convincesus of the momentum’s inevitability. He con-vinces us he has captured and transcribed someessential generative rhythms. ink back towhat neville cardus said. Rather than melody,this music is about rhythm and energy and invention.

energy also marks the many great, tenderadagios Beethoven created. in them, too, themusic is not so much based on recognizableand memorable melodies as on reflection, ongesture, on beautifully uttered phrases—quietlyurgent, at once rapt and taut with compressedforce, sublime.

Beethoven understood the sublime, andalso the absurd. as a deaf composer—whatcould be more unlikely?—he would have hadto cultivate a sense of irony and the ridiculous.His humor could be crude. if his instrumentalmusic included words, you can bet many ofthem would be spelled in four letters.

Sometimes crude and more oen direct,Beethoven is also subtle. listening to differentartists approach him reveals different shadingsand nuances. i recently compared recordingsof the Appassionata Sonata’s first movement by three pianists. a minute into Rudolf Serkin’srecording, he attacks the keyboard, seeminglybent on destroying it. Trills that emerge as or-naments in recordings by artur Schnabel andalfred Brendel pinch like pinpricks in Serkin’srecording, which is only slightly slower thanSchnabel’s but almost half a minute faster thanBrendel’s. (Schnabel, still identified with thesonatas today, was the first to record them all,

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Beethoven 250is season, cal performances celebratesthe 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth.Join us for concerts including:

JOnATHAn BISS, pIanoTHE COMPlETE PIAnO SOnATAS all performances in Hertz Hall

September 21 at 8pmSonatas nos. 1, 9, 13 (Quasi unafantasia), 12 (Funeral March), 21(Waldstein)

September 22 at 3pmSonatas nos. 4, 17 (Tempest), 5, 23(Appassionata)

October 12 at 8pmSonatas nos. 15 (Pastoral), 20, 3, 27, 28

October 13 at 3pmSonatas nos. 6, 10, 18 (e Hunt), 29(Hammerklavier)

December 15 at 3pmSonatas nos. 25 (Cuckoo), 11, 14(Moonlight), 24 (À érèse), 30

March 7 at 8pmSonatas nos. 19, 16, 7, 2, 31

March 8 at 3pmSonatas nos. 8 (Pathétique), 22, 26 (Les adieux), 32

ADDITIOnAl RECITAlS AnD ORCHESTRAl COnCERTS

Danish String Quartetnovember 10 at 3pm, Hertz HallString Quartet no. 13 in B-flat major, Op.130, with Grosse Fuge, Op. 133

David Finckel, cello and Wu Han, pianonovember 24 at 3pm, Hertz HallSonata no. 3 in a major, Op. 69

Sheku Kanneh-Mason, celloand Isata Kanneh-Mason, pianoDecember 4 at 8pm, Zellerbach Hall12 variations on Mozart’s “Ein Mädchenoder Weibchen,” Op. 66

Royal Philharmonic OrchestraPinchas Zukerman, conductorJanuary 26 at 3pm, Zellerbach HallOverture to Egmont

Rotterdam Philharmoniclahav Shani, conductorand nelson Freire, pianoMarch 22 at 3pm, Zellerbach Hallpiano concerto no. 5, Emperor

FURTHER READIng

Beethoven’s Shadow by Jonathan BissGo to amazon.com

Political Beethovenby prof. nicholas Mathew, Uc BerkeleyDept. of Music (speaker at pre-performancetalks before Sunday matinee recitals: Sept 22, Oct 13, Dec 15, Mar 8)Go to amazon.com

Beethoven’s Guide to Being Human by larry RotheGo to sfsymphony.org, click on “Watch,listen & learn,” then on “program notes & articles,” then on “articles & interviews,”and scroll to “March 15, 2011.”

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in the 1930s.) Toward the end of the move-ment, a racing passage is suddenly interrupted,punctuated by a downward jab. Serkin hesitatesfor a micro-second before the jab, and in thatsuspension you feel him gathering strength for the blow. neither Schnabel nor Brendelbring a similar sense of drama to this moment.While Serkin focuses on each step in the nar-rative and its various characters, Schnabel isless episodic, integrating its elements morecompletely, emphasizing the music’s beauty.Brendel stresses architecture and balance,drawing special attention to a four-note figurethat is cousin to the fate motif of the FihSymphony. Do these differences reflect theartists, or Beethoven?

“Who knows what ingredients go into the greatest of performances?” the film directorerrol Morris asks in his New York Times essay“e pianist and the lobster,” proceeding topoint out that “no matter how good we can everbe, we may still be chained to the wall in plato’scave, fantasizing about an unreached ideal.”

Given such shiing ground, you mightthink Beethoven offers no more stability thanthe public figures who alter their positions with

the polls. But all three pianists whose Appassio -nata i compared suggest what the Appassionatais, different and yet the same, there for us.

in a world as unstable as the ground inearthquake country, we need Beethoven. as weperform and listen to what Beethoven gave us,we do well to remember the deafness and illnesses he coped with, how his very act of writ-ing represented courage in the face of consid-erable misery, and how that misery vanishesand that courage is mirrored in the dramas he wrote—dramas that culminate insistently orgently or even enigmatically in some ideal des-tination. in our lives, that ideal will remain un-reached simply because it is an ideal, buttraveling toward it can be good in so manyways. Beethoven invites us to join him.

Larry Rothe, who writes about music for CalPerformances and the San Francisco Opera, haswritten for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra,New York Philharmonic, and San FranciscoSymphony. His books include For the love ofMusic and Music for a city, Music for theWorld.

Portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Willibrord Mähler (1778–1860), 1804–05

When we consider ludwig van Bee -thoven’s artistic persona overall, therole played by the piano can hardly

be exaggerated. Oen regarded as a vehicle oreven a ready-made laboratory for the composer,the instrument also served as a kind of alter ego.it provided not only a tool but a place apart thatencouraged Beethoven to confide his boldest,wildest intuitions and creative aspirations.

Recalling the spell Beethoven cast when per-forming at the keyboard, his prodigy studentcarl czerny wrote: “His improvisation wasmost brilliant and striking. in whatever com-pany he might chance to be, he knew how toproduce such an effect upon every hearer thatfrequently not an eye remained dry, while manywould break into loud sobs; for there was some-thing wonderful in his expression in additionto the beauty and originality of his ideas and his spirited style of rendering them.” czernyadds that, “aer an improvisation of this kind, [Bee thoven] would burst into loud laughter andbanter his hearers on the emotion he hadcaused in them. ‘You are fools!’ he would say”—cultivating a contrarian image was part of the persona Beethoven presented to his aristo-cratic admirers.

e 32 published piano sonatas tally roughlya half-million individual notes. ose noteschart one of the most extraordinary trajectoriesin Western music, encoding the epic of an artis-tic adventurer who persistently challenged theboundaries of what music itself can express. culminating in the visionary extremes of Bee -thoven’s late style, these works span nearly his entire career (and even reach back to his ado les-cence in Bonn, if we include the three unpub-lished sonatas he wrote at age 12—just aroundthe time Jonathan Biss had his first major epi -phany encountering the Beethoven sonatas).

Beethoven produced a greater number ofpiano sonatas than he did of works in any other genre: 32 remains the canonical number(though in his edition, by admitting into thecanon the aforementioned three from his teen -age years, the musicologist Barry cooper hasattempted to extend the total to 35). at the sametime, as Biss has pointed out, the piano sonatasresisted being categorized and dated accordingto the conventional three-period model of Bee -thoven’s development—early, middle, and late(or, in Franz liszt’s unforgettable phrase: “l’ado-lescent, l’homme, le dieu”).

e aerlives of these works have assumedcountless forms and continue to set expecta-tions: for composers, performers, music lovers.and just as they chart the development of Bee -thoven’s genius, each encounter reflects a newstage in our understanding of what music, at itsmost challenging and under the pressure of that genius, can convey. as Biss writes in Bee -tho ven’s Shadow, his behind-the-scenes accountof the odyssey of performing and recording thesonatas, “composing gave his life an order andmeaning that were otherwise unavailable tohim.” e challenges that the piano sonatas em-body from Beethoven’s own life and experienceare transferred on to the performer (and lis-tener), but the result “addresses and consolesthe spirit in a way that no other creative artisthas managed. [Beethoven] is simultaneouslysuperhuman and intensely, painfully human.”

omas May is a writer, critic, educator, andtranslator. Along with essays regularly commis-sioned by the San Francisco Symphony, the Juil -li ard School, and other leading institutions, hecontributes to the new York Times and Musicalamerica and blogs about the arts at www.meme-teria.com.

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Beethoven’s piano Sonatas

an introductionby Thomas May

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Cal Performances’ 2019–20 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo.

Saturday, September 21, 2019, 8pmHertz Hall

Jonathan Biss, piano

ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)e Complete Piano Sonatas 

(Concert 1)

Sonata no. 1 in F minor, Op. 2, no. 1allegroadagio

Menuetto: allegrettoprestissimo

Sonata no. 9 in e major, Op. 14, no. 1allegro

allegrettoRondo: allegro commodo

Sonata no. 13 in e-flat major, Op. 27, no. 1, Quasi una fantasiaandante: allegro – allegro molto e vivace –

adagio con espressione – allegro vivace

INTERMISSION

Sonata no. 12 in a-flat major, Op. 26, Funeral Marchandante con variazioniScherzo: allegro molto

Marcia funebre sulla morte d’un eroeallegro

Sonata no. 21 in c major, Op. 53, Waldsteinallegro con brio

introduzione: adagio moltoRondo: allegretto moderato – prestissimo

Piano Sonata no. 1 in F minor, Op. 2, no. 1ludwig van Beethoven published his first set ofsonatas as Op. 2 (a set of three) in 1796—he was25 at the time—with a dedication to JosephHaydn, whose student he had been. We knowthat he played these three sonatas for Haydn ata private concert held by one of his patrons inthe fall of 1795. By this point, he deemed whathe had created of sufficient quality to be offi-cially acknowledged as his first published state-ments in the genre.

each of the three Op. 2 sonatas is ambitiouslycast in four movements, and the fact that Bee -thoven decided to launch the set with a work in the minor is noteworthy. (compare this withother significant Beethovenian genres: his FirstSymphony, First String Quartet, and First pianoconcerto are all in major keys.) e openingallegro theme of this F minor sonata clearlyechoes the finale of the K. 550 Symphony in G minor of Mozart (1788)—whose piano con -certo in c minor also le an indelible mark onyoung Bee thoven.

Shaped as a dynamic, rising arpeggio, thegesture later is turned in the opposite, descend-ing direction to provide the second theme. alsoof interest is the use of a fermata pause (i.e., animprovisatory break that brings the tense actionof the opening to an abrupt, suspenseful halt).is gesture of silence is what gives the open-ing motto of the Fih Symphony, for example,much of its power.

Beethoven grants a respite between the agi-tated emotions of the first and third movementswith a comparatively conventional, song-formadagio in F major as the slow movement. eensuing Minuet, by contrast, boldly plays withdynamic contrasts in a way that will become astylistic signature. lauded for his thrilling man-ner with impetuous tempi, Beethoven draws on this facet of his keyboard personality for the restless and stormy prestissimo finale.Within the framework of its breakneck speed, a middle section of exquisite lyrical poise offersa welcome brief oasis. a fortissimo descent con-cludes the sonata.

Piano Sonata no. 9 in E major, Op. 14, no. 1e two sonatas of Op. 14 date from 1798–99

and were dedicated to one of Beethoven’s bene-factors, Baroness Josefa von Braun. While Bee -thoven had already attempted to use the pianoto create a sound world of orchestral scope inthe Op. 7 sonata of the year before (and, tosome extent, in the contemporaneous Op. 13,Pathétique), both Op. 14 sonatas are decidedlyintimate, intended for the private sphere.

indeed, Beethoven underscored the chambermusic sensibility here by deciding to transcribethe first, the Sonata in e major, for string quar-tet in 1801 (the only sonata he so transcribed).although he disapproved in principle of tran-scribing from solo piano to string instruments,some scholars have argued that this sonata wasinitially conceived as a string quartet.

e piece unfolds in three movements.ough the motivic material of the allegro firstmovement comprises elemental gestures—fourths, arpeggios, scales—Beethoven’s treat-ment is unfailingly engaging. e middlemove ment, an allegretto in e minor, is moreakin to a minuet, with a brief trio that shisboldly to c major. concluding this sonata is arondo marked “comfortably allegro” (allegrocommodo) in which Beethoven indulges theplayful humor that is a recurrent element in thesonatas.

Piano Sonata no. 13 in E-flat major, Op. 27, no. 1, Quasi una fantasiaBeethoven was already concerned with ques-tioning conventional classical sonata form andexpectations in his early sonatas. e Op. 27pair, which he completed in 1801, take a particularly innovative approach to issues of architecture. like its much-better-known com- panion (the Sonata in c-sharp minor, immor-talized as the Moonlight), the Sonata in e-flatmajor (jestingly called by some the Sunlight)bears the unusual designation Sonata quasi unafantasia (i.e., “in the manner of a fantasy”). inboth works, Beethoven transforms the classicalarchitecture of sonatas built from separatemovements into a single overarching fan tasy bysegueing directly (attacca) from one movementto the next—most explicitly in this work, whosefour movements all proceed without pause andfind their center of gravity in the final movement.

PROgRAM nOTES

e first movement presents a kind of rondocharacterized by simple, relaxed harmonic see-sawing, though Beethoven undercuts its stabil-ity with sudden shi to music in c major (thefirst time stealing in with quiet surprise). Sleight-of-hand syncopations energize the allegromolto e vivace, a scherzo-with-trio movementin c minor that stops short in the major.

as a slow movement within the fantasy(adagio con espressione), Beethoven turns tosong like, improvisational musing. e soundworld here is deeply felt but so brief as to forma kind of lyrical upbeat or prelude to the joyfulallegro vivace finale. Strains of the adagio re-turn unexpectedly (transposed to the homekey) in one of this sonata’s most affecting move-ments. is gesture of recollection out of theblue makes the ensuing, unbridled, rapid-firecoda sound all the more brilliant and conclusive.

Piano Sonata no. 12 in A-flat major, Op. 26,Funeral Marchcomposed at the dawn of the new century anddedicated to the composer’s patron prince Karlvon lichnowsky, this sonata marks a new stagein Beethoven’s approach to the genre—and inhis understanding of his identity as a composer.Here, according to the biographer Jan Swafford,Beethoven “fully possessed the voice historywould know him by, and at age 30 he was writ-ing music that would place him once and for allin the history of his art. everything about thissonata seems to be more than anything in theworks before: more personal; more innovativein the approach to form…; more varied in theexpressive scope, with fresh kinds of unity.”

as to its formal innovation, Op. 26 is the firstsonata by Beethoven that begins without an actual sonata-form movement. indeed, none of its four movements is in sonata form, andBee thoven reverses the usual slow movement-scherzo order, placing the latter before the for-mer (as in Op. 27, no. 1). e first movement,moreover, is an andante, its five variations presenting a concept of musical developmentthat swerves from the dialectic of the sonataparadigm. e Scherzo contrasts staccato and legato articulation, while the third movement

returns to an andante tempo (now markedmaestoso—“majestic”) and the variation idea.Titled “Funeral March on the Death of a Hero,”it naturally brings the parallel movement of theEroica Symphony to mind, as do the andante’ssolemn gestures of dotted rhythms in the minorkey (albeit in a more flowing tempo). e sameholds for the brightly contrasting middle sec-tion, with bass tremolos suggesting ceremonialdrumrolls. Beethoven actually orchestrated thismovement for use as incidental music (usingwinds and brass): it was played at his funeral in 1827. His pupil carl czerny reported that thecomposer was thinking of a mythic hero, not a contemporary napoleonic figure. His direct inspiration seems to have been Ferdinand paër’s1801 opera Achille. e variation idea returnsyet again in the relatively modest but dazzlingfinale. “e effect is of pulling back from thesomber funeral march into something ani-mated but impersonal, like a cleansing rain,” re-marks Swafford.

Piano Sonata no. 21 in C major, Op. 53,WaldsteinBeethoven’s sketches for this landmark sonatacan be found in the same notebook he used towork out ideas for the contemporaneous EroicaSymphony; he completed both works in 1804.e composer dedicated Op. 53 to countFerdinand ernst Gabriel von Waldstein—thenobleman who was among his earliest support-ers when he first set off for vienna (hence thewell-known nickname). is music is animatedby the surge of renewed creativity followingBee thoven’s Heiligenstadt Testament—in whichhe confided overcoming his thoughts of suicideand resolving to accept the fate of his worseningdeafness.

Here, Beethoven transcends the High classi -cal style with a quasi-symphonic approach tothe keyboard. e Waldstein Sonata was in factpartially inspired by the gi of a new, state-of-the-art instrument Beethoven received fromthe parisian piano makers at erard. e para-dox is that the music manages at once to soundsymphonic and quintessentially pianistic.

PROgRAM nOTES

8

continued on p. 24

Next page: Ludwig van Beethoven in his Study; from a painting by Carl Schloesser (1832–1914)

Bust statue of Beethoven by Hugo Hagen (1818–1871), based on life mask by Franz Klein done in 1812

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Cal Performances’ 2019–20 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo.

Sunday, September 22, 2019, 3pmHertz Hall

Jonathan Biss, piano

ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)e Complete Piano Sonatas 

(Concert 2)

Sonata no. 4 in e-flat major, Op. 7allegro molto e con brio

largo con gran espressioneallegro

Rondo: poco allegretto e grazioso

Sonata no. 17 in D minor, Op. 31, no. 2, e Tempestlargo: allegro

adagioallegretto

INTERMISSION

Sonata no. 5 in c minor, Op. 10, no. 1allegro molto e con brio

adagio moltoFinale: prestissimo

Sonata no. 23 in F minor, Op. 57, Appassionataallegro assai

andante con motoallegro ma non troppo

Piano Sonata no. 4 in E-flat major, Op. 7Beethoven is believed to have composed thisambitious sonata in 1796, while visiting the family estate in Bratislava of a female student:Babette countess Keglević, to whom he decidedto dedicate the score. like his first threesonatas—published the previous year as Op. 2—Op. 7 contains four movements, but its muchgrander scale is apparent from the fact that thisis the first piano sonata Beethoven publishedunder its own opus number, sans companions.

and Op. 7 reined as the longest of the pianosonatas for years, up until Beethoven wrote theOp. 106 Hammerklavier in 1817–18. it repre-sents the first piano sonata he designated on itstitle page as “grand” (“Grande Sonate” is some-times used as a nickname). His student carlczerny once remarked that the epithet Appassi o -nata would have been more properly suited to Op. 7 than to the Op. 53 sonata that JonathanBiss has chosen to close this program. e relative neglect of the epic Op. 7 is puzzling in-deed. To what extent might the lack of a catchynickname be to blame?

e scale of this work indicates how rapidlyBeethoven was pushing beyond his modelsfrom Mozart, Haydn, and other authorities—and beyond the technical limits of the key-board’s power as he knew it. While the laterWaldstein (with which Biss concluded lastevening’s program in the cycle) is contem-poraneous with the breakthrough Eroica, themomentum of Op. 7’s first movement—in theEroica key of e-flat major—seems to prefiguresomething of the impetuous drive of that symphony. it similarly features an energeticallypulsating accompaniment on the same note. a highly contrasting, chorale-like second themeallows for a brief dissipation of this tension, but it comes back with a vengeance at the end of the exposition. Beethoven inserts powerful—at times even violent—accents and abrupt dynamic shis amid the virtuoso passages ofthis fiery movement, whose soundscape at moments strains for an almost orchestral ex-pansiveness.

e harmonic change to c major for thelargo, to be played “con gran espressione” (“withgreat expressiveness”), arrests the attention at

once. Beethoven subtly underscores a sense ofunity by again starting, as he had in the allegromolto e con brio, with two pairs of chords sep-arated by a pause. Here, in one of his most pro-found slow movements, spacious silences areintegrated to wonderful effect.

e allegro third movement begins sweetlyand politely, yet unexpected syncopations of silence and hammering accents impart the atti-tude of a scherzo. e trio, in agitated e-flatminor, recalls the restless momentum of theopening with incessant triplets. in the finale(poco allegretto e grazioso), an especially in-gratiating melody takes a backward glance toBeethoven’s origins, though he again surpriseswith a tense shi to c minor in the contrastingmiddle section. aer so much ground has beentraversed, this “Grand Sonata” comes to a self-effacing close.

Piano Sonata no. 17 in D minor, Op. 31,no. 2, e TempestRoughly contemporaneous with the MoonlightSonata, this work, dating from 1801–02, hassimilarly become known to posterity via an indelible nickname, e Tempest (Der Sturmin German). Yet, as in the case of the Moonlight,the highly suggestive moniker did not originatewith Beethoven. e party responsible for it wasanton Schindler, the composer’s personal sec-retary—and the source of a good deal of dubi-ous “information” that has become inextricablylinked to Beethoven.

Schindler claimed that his question as towhat Beethoven had envisioned with this musicprompted the reply: “Read Shakespeare’s Tem -pest.” While Beethoven did own a complete edi-tion of Shakespeare’s works, the notion that hewas attempting something like program musicto illustrate the Bard’s late romance must beconsidered with caution. aer all, a good manyother sonatas by the composer include whatmight be labeled “stormy” music.

in any case, this sonata in D minor stands outon its own, in purely musical terms. e open-ing largo might suggest a slow introduction,but it is an integral counterpart to the agitatedallegro. ese alternating musical states forma polarity of contemplation and terror and gen-

PROgRAM nOTES

22

erate an emotional complexity greater than thesum of their parts. pay close attention to thebare recitative-like lament when the largo re-turns at the recapitulation. it is one of the mosthaunting moments in all Beethoven (anticipat-ing the oboe solo at the parallel moment in thefirst movement of the Fih Symphony): to bewhispered, as the eminent scholar charles Rosenhas remarked, “like a voice from the tomb.”

Duration and scale here manifest Bee tho -ven’s preoccupation with exploring new, ambitious potential for the genre. e firstmove ment’s architecture veers from conven-tional sonata design to build a powerful dramaof dramatic contrasts and musical suspense.e arpeggiated chord that begins this sonatais echoed at the start of the adagio, now shiedto a newfound equipoise in B-flat major. itopens the vista onto a serenely songful dream,momentarily sealing us off from the turmoilpreceding it. Yet the mood of restless anxiety re-turns in the perpetual motion of the allegrettofinale. e music thrillingly synthesizes an airof improvisational mastery with Beethoven’svirtuoso pianism, all in the service of thissonata’s extraordinary psychological intensity.

Piano Sonata no. 5 in C minor, Op. 10, no. 1Beethoven worked simultaneously, starting in 1796, on the three sonatas he published asOp. 10 in 1798. He dedicated them to count essanna Margaretha Browne, who was the spouseof his patron Johann Georg Browne, a Russiandiplomat of irish background in service invienna. among the gis Beethoven receivedfrom this aristocratic pair was a horse.

certain “common features” link these sonatastogether, according to the biographer WilliamKinderman, “such as the presence of comicmusic abounding in sudden contrasts and un-expected turns”—traits Beethoven had likely in-ternalized from Haydn, and then made his own.Yet each sonata in this set possesses a distinctivepersonality. One contemporary critic (writingin 1799) praised the set as a whole but could nothelp wishing that “it might occur to this fanci-ful composer to practice a certain economy inhis labors.” Beethoven was seen as too prodigalwith his “fancy” and “abundance of ideas.”

e opening sonata of the Op. 10 set is alsoBeethoven’s first piano sonata in c minor, thekey associated with “Beethoven as Hero,” ascharles Rosen puts it. e stern, call-to-atten-tion chord opening the allegro molto e con briosplinters into a tensely dotted, rising idea, followed by a contrasting so lament. is setsinto relief the lyrical second theme. in develop-ing these ideas, Beethoven seems eager to stretchbeyond the keyboard’s confines of register.

With the adagio molto in a-flat major, we encounter “the last such lyrical sonata slowmovement Beethoven was to write” and acousin to the parallel movement of the Sonatain F minor, Op. 2, no. 1, according to the pianist Robert Taub. e composer, he explains,“never returned to the style of a florid slowmovement in a piano sonata.” e prestissimofinale resorts to a compressed dramatic processsimilar to that of the first movement—its uni-son octave opening giving an anticipation ofhow the later, groundbreaking Appassionatawill begin. Uncanny hints of the Fih Sym -phony similarly emerge in the brief devel-opment. an intriguing reversal of one ofBee tho ven’s favorite strategies occurs in thecoda: rather than speed up the (already rush-ing) tempo, he slows it down to an impro-visa tory adagio, then repeats the shock of theopening with a terse final statement that guttersout like a candle, ending suddenly in c major.

Piano Sonata no. 23 in F minor, Op. 57,appassionataa few years separate e Tempest from thissonata, which also has become known by a post -humously conferred nickname (this time, froma publisher with good marketing savvy). eAppassionata dates from 1804–05, yet it sharesseveral noteworthy aspects with Op. 31, no. 2:most obviously, the raging turbulence of theouter movements. in the case of this F minorsonata, a prominent rhythmic motto (threeshorts and a long) relates it to the complex ofmusical ideas Beethoven was preoccupied withat the time, when he was also making sketchesfor the Fih Symphony. a sonata-symphonyconnection seems to obtain here not unlike thatfound in the earlier Eroica/Waldstein relation.

PROgRAM nOTES

23

e Appassionata finds Beethoven in fullyamped “heroic” mode, but here channeled intoa more concentrated and fiercely dramaticstyle. We might recall that F minor is the sametonality Beethoven daringly chose to inaugu-rate his sonata cycle. From it he generates a dis-turbingly dark, violent, menacing soundscapeof tragic conflict.

played at the outset in unadorned unisonand with an eerily conspiratorial quiet, the maintheme of the opening allegro assai sprawls overtwo octaves. note Beethoven’s masterful use ofdisturbing pauses—also a feature of the FihSymphony, along with the motto rhythm thathere emerges low in the bass. e second themereworks the first, viewing it from a differentangle—a concentration of ideas that intensifiesthe drama’s vividness. Remarkably, the com-poser dispenses with the conventional repeat of the exposition for the first time in his pianosonatas. Hammering outbursts are set againstpassages of unnerving sotto voce—nowheremore so than in the reduction to ppp to end

the movement, the passion momentarily spentbut by no means resolved.

e first movement of e Tempest hadended with a similar strategy, and, in theAppassionata, the shi to D-flat major for theandante con moto parallels the shi in the former work’s slow movement (down a majorthird from its minor home key). is andante—the eye of the hurricane—is hymnal in charac-ter. Beethoven proceeds to dash its reassurancewith the tempestuous, perpetual-motion furyof the finale. e theme whirls and churns with merciless determination—the Fates spin-ning their thread. ere is no journey in thissonata from darkness to light. it yields only unrelenting tragedy, closing with a coda thatspeeds up like a mad dance of death. aer theseexhaustive explorations of the sonata, Beethovenwould take a lengthy break—five years—fromthe genre. But he had already changed our expectations of what could be accomplishedwithin it forever.

—omas May

PROgRAM nOTES

24

Steadily pulsing chords at the outset of theallegro con brio (the same marking as the firstmovement of the Fih Symphony) signal thedynamism of Beethoven’s thinking. ey estab-lish an electrifying current of seemingly end-lessly renewable energy (compare this with thesimilar pulsation at the start of the Eroica). adramatic pause brings the forward motion to an abrupt stop at the end of the first full statement. Beethoven’s harmonic planning and dramatic use of extreme contrasts of range andvolume shape the first movement’s magnificentarchitecture.

initially, Beethoven planned a substantialandante to correspond to the proportions ofthe outer movements, but later he replaced thiswith the “introduzione”—a quasi-operatic intermezzo that bridges the outer movementsand raises the curtain on the massive finale.like the allegro con brio, the final movementopens almost surreptitiously before swellingwith immense energy. Beethoven brings it all to a close with a coda of dizzying speed—in theprocess redefining the piano’s powers.

—omas May

PROgRAM nOTES (cont. from p. 18)

25

Cal Performances’ 2019–20 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo.

Saturday, October 12, 2019, 8pmHertz Hall

Jonathan Biss, piano

ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)e Complete Piano Sonatas 

(Concert 3)

Sonata no. 15 in D major, Op. 28, Pastoraleallegro

andanteScherzo: allegro vivace

Rondo: allegro ma non troppo

Sonata no. 20 in G major, Op. 49, no. 2allegro ma non troppo

Tempo di Menuetto

Sonata no. 3 in c major, Op. 2, no. 3allegro con brio

adagioScherzo: allegretto

allegro assai

INTERMISSION

Sonata no. 27 in e minor, Op. 90Mit lebhaigkeit und durchaus mit empfindung und ausdruck

nicht zu geschwind und sehr singbar vorgetragen

Sonata no. 28 in a major, Op. 101etwas lebha und mit der innigsten empfindung

lebha, marschmäßiglangsam und sehnsuchtsvoll

Geschwinde, doch nicht zu sehr, und mit entschlossenheit

Portrait of Beethoven by Christian Horneman (1765–1844), 1803

PROgRAM nOTES

2

Piano Sonata no. 15 in D major, Op. 28,pastoraleTradition has surrounded a number of Beetho -ven’s piano sonatas with vague programmatic(or “characteristic”) associations. ese are usu-ally crystalized by the nicknames attached tothem. is sonata, which was published in 1801,with a dedication to Joseph von Sonnenfels (a former Mozart patron and anti-torture acti vist), has become known as the Pastorale—another publisher’s invention—though it is not as famous as Beethoven’s other moniker-bearing sonatas.

e suggestion of a peaceful, bucolic moodarises from specific devices Beethoven useshere: above all, the repeated bass drone of thetonic D in the finale triggered rhetorical con-notations of the countryside. One might alsoidentify the charming rondo theme in thatmovement as belonging to the same family asthe lightly tripping theme in the final move-ment of the later Pastoral Symphony (whichdoes bear Beethoven’s authentic nickname).

Beethoven sets aside the experimental modeof the three sonatas preceding Op. 28, optinginstead to take a look again at more classicallyoriented conventions. e rhythmic pulse inthe bass at the beginning of the first movement(oen likened to a steady beat provided by thetimpani) anchors the harmonic voyage to come.

Beethoven’s use of contrasts is especiallypleasing in the D minor andante, as well as in the relationship between the allegro vivaceScherzo in D major and its minor-key trio.Despite the music’s leisurely aura, the finale encompasses a wide range of textures, from intricate polyphony to Beethoven’s most virtu-osic vein in a thrilling coda. as a whole, writesthe biographer Maynard Solomon, this sonata“celebrates the peace that comes from the fulfillment of a difficult creative effort and withdraws to a relative traditionalism, fromwhich Bee thoven will gain strength for a newcreative surge.”

Piano Sonata no. 20 in g major, Op. 49, no. 2Jonathan Biss’ juxtaposition of the five sonatasin this program underscores the inadequacy of pigeonholing Beethoven into conveniently

schematic periods that set “early” off against“middle” and “late.” even within a narrowchronological span, the composer exploited remarkably disparate strategies, such that eachfresh approach to the genre possesses a uniquecharacter.

e Op. 49 pair of sonatas comes from theheyday of Beethoven’s years as a performingvirtuoso in the 1790s. (e comparatively lateopus number merely indicates that these pieceswere held back from publication for severalyears, though their composition is actuallydated sometime between 1795 and 1798.) Yetin this modest set of twins (see p. 46 for a description of its companion), each comprisingonly two movements, Beethoven purposelyreins in virtuoso display. anyone who has stud-ied piano has likely encountered these so-called“easy sonatas,” for they belong to the tradition ofkeyboard music intended for students and am-ateurs, to which such composers as J.S. Bach andMozart also contributed such notable repertoire.

not that there is anything rote or formulaicabout Beethoven’s pared-down writing here. esecond of this pair, in G major, is even more-straightforward than its G minor twin but posesinterpretive challenges in the lack of dynamicmarkings, which normally play such a crucialrole in Beethoven’s shaping of the musical ar-gument. (e autograph score is not extant.)

Both movements are in G major, the first asimple and charming allegro ma non troppowhose two main themes feature a contrast ofextroverted and more subdued lyrical material.Beethoven, the master atomizer, pulverizer, andtransmogrifier of motivic ideas, here contentshimself with a mere wisp of a development sec-tion. e first movement is complemented by a rondo in tempo di menuetto (an indicationBeethoven uses elsewhere in the sonatas onlyfor Op. 54—as well as in his uber-popular Op. 20 Septet, for which he recycled this tune).each reprise of the rondo theme offers an op-portunity for the pianist to shade a bit differ-ently with improvisatory inflections.

Piano Sonata no. 3 in C major, Op. 2, no. 3Of the very first set of piano sonatas that Bee -thoven published in 1796 as his Op. 2 (see p. 17

Vienna ca. 1800. The Kohlmarkt. Artaria, Beethoven’s publisher, is on the right.

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for more background), the concluding work in c major is the boldest, in regards both to itsstructural scope and to the challenges it posesfor the performer. is music has been hailedas a prefiguration of the brilliance of the later c major Waldstein Sonata. like its companionsin Op. 2, the third sonata is laid out in an ex-pansive four movements (in contrast to thethree movements more typical of Haydn’s andMozart’s solo piano sonatas).

e allegro con brio first movement pres-ents an abundance of material, including a surprising transitional thematic group in theminor—a hint of the harmonic surprises scat-tered throughout this sonata. a lengthy devel-opment is balanced by the unusual bravurarequired for the coda, for which Beethovenwrites out a cadenza—as if he wanted to makethis solo sonata interchangeable with a publicconcerto. in tandem with the expanded archi-tectural proportions, he makes pithy use of theopening theme, enhancing a sense of organicunity. it even appears subliminally in the adagio,in startling e major, where it is transformed intoa new melody. an extended minor-key sectionevokes pathos with the most economical ofmeans, based on a sighing semitone figure.

Beethoven shows off his contrapuntalprowess in the neatly dovetailing canon imita-tions of the Scherzo. instead of offering repose,the Trio ripples past in restless triplets, while the coda retreats into stagey whispers. Some ofthe most dazzling flourishes (and technical de-mands) are reserved for the allegro assai finale.e main theme of ascending chords (to beplayed with a light touch) almost suggests anamiable parody of the early classical era com-monplace known as the “Mannheim rocket.”into this movement Beethoven crowds power-ful crescendos, daring harmonic shis and hintsof still another cadenza (which never actually ar-rives), with a fanfare of trills near the end.

Piano Sonata no. 27 in E major, Op. 90a period of absence from the piano sonatagenre separates this work, composed in thesummer of 1814, from its predecessor, Op. 81a,which had been completed almost five yearsearlier. even Beethoven’s tempo indications hint

at a significant change in perspective. While hehad started introducing German directives toclarify his italian ones in that preceding sonata(see p. 51), the composer dispenses with theitalian convention altogether in Op. 90. esonata is dedicated to the composer’s patronprince Moritz von lichnowsky.

e German indication for the first move-ment (“Mit lebhaigkeit und durchaus mitemp findung und ausdruck”) might be trans-lated “lively, with feeling and expressionthroughout” and that for the second (“nicht zu geschwind und sehr singbar vorgetragen”) “to be played not too fast and in a very singingmanner.” (e traditional lore from antonSchindler suggested Beethoven wanted to namethe movements “contest between Head andHeart” and “conversation with the Beloved,” respectively.)

e two-movement scheme—so differentfrom that of the early Op. 49—additionally singles out this e minor sonata as a work on the threshold of Beethoven’s musical thinkingin his late style. Opus 78 from 1809 had likewisebeen cast in only two movements, yet here thejuxtaposition is extreme, as if to suggest the yinand yang of experience itself. instead of the rawconflict of dialectical opposites, organized to resolve in a goal-oriented “victory,” both move- ments simply co-exist: night and day. as such,they foreshadow the design of Beethoven’s finalessay in the genre, Op. 111.

e first movement sets up internal con-trasts that remain unresolved. its openingstatement, structured as a call and response, is declamatory, but emphatic and unyieldingrhythms give way to a flowing lyrical impulse.e exposition is tight, compressed, yet in-tensely eventful, marked by dynamic contrastsand crashing dissonances, while the codaopens up vast new mysteries.

With a simple upbeat, the second movementshis to e major. notwithstanding the innocentsuavity of its rondo theme, Beethoven makes it feel like the inevitable counterpart to thedeclamatory outbursts of the first movement.even through the digressions of the interven-ing episodes, Beethoven’s writing here spells outthe implications of the opening lyricism with

Piano Sonata in A major, Op. 101, Fourth Movement, manuscript sketch in Beethoven's handwriting

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music that seems to pass beyond conflict andcomes to a close with a heartbreakingly honestwhisper.

Piano Sonata no. 28 in A major, Op. 101With Op. 101, Jonathan Biss enters into therealm of what is widely designated Beethoven’slate style. completed in 1816, this sonata re-minds us not only of the extent to which thecomposer refined and expanded the formal andstylistic ideas he had inherited from Haydn,Mozart, and others. in his so-called late style,Beethoven radically reconsidered the essence ofthe piano sonata as a creative act.

By this time, worsening deafness had forcedhim to abandon his own career as a virtuoso pianist. e 45-year-old Beethoven dedicatedOp. 101 to Baroness Dorothea von ertmann, a student who became a highly respected con-temporary viennese pianist—and at one timewas regarded as a strong candidate in the questto identify the mysterious “immortal Beloved”with whom Beethoven famously correspondedin the summer of 1812.

another notable feature of the publishedscore is the fact that here, for the first time, Bee -thoven used a German word for the rapidlyevolving piano, settling on  Hammerklavier(which would become the moniker of his sub-sequent sonata, Op. 106). His (notoriously un-reliable) personal secretary anton Schindlerclaimed that “this is the only one [of his piano

sonatas] that was publicly performed during thelifetime of the composer,” with Beethoven in at-tendance as part of the audience. He also re-ports that Beethoven named the first and thirdmovements “impressions and reveries.”

Marked “etwas lebha, und mit der innig-sten empfindung” (“Somewhat lively, and withthe most intimate sensitivity”), the gentle firstmovement conveys complex emotional intima-cies beneath its deceptively simple, flowing sur-face. Richard Wag ner not only greatly admiredthis music but learned much from it for his con-cept of “infinite melody.”

e “lively, march-like” ensuing movementshis unexpectedly to F major (like the Scherzoof the a major Seventh Symphony). its con-trasting middle section builds on the canonicoverlapping of voices. e adagio (“slow andfull of longing”) is not a stand-alone slow move-ment but serves as a meditative, improvisatoryinterlude and introduction to the finale, incor-porating a memory of the opening movement’sfirst theme near the end. Beethoven then segues into the richly confident final movement(“swily, but not too much so, and with determination”), which features elaboratelycontrapuntal textures—another preoccupationof Bee thoven’s late style—above all in the de-velopment section, which unfolds as a grandfugue. in the final bars, Beethoven repeats histrick of slowing and hushing the music beforebringing it back to tempo at full blast.

—omas May

Portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Willibrord Mähler (1778–1860), 1815

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Cal Performances’ 2019–20 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo.

Sunday, October 13, 2019, 3pmHertz Hall

Jonathan Biss, piano

ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)e Complete Piano Sonatas 

(Concert 4)

Sonata no. 6 in F major, Op. 10, no. 2allegro

Menuetto. allegrettopresto

Sonata no. 10 in G major, Op. 14, no. 2allegro

andanteScherzo: allegro assai

Sonata no. 18 in e-flat major, Op. 31, no. 3, e Huntallegro

Scherzo: allegretto vivaceMenuetto: Moderato e grazioso

presto con fuoco

INTERMISSION

Sonata no. 29 in B-flat major, Op. 106, Hammerklavierallegro

Scherzo: assai vivaceadagio sostenuto

largo: allegro risoluto

Piano Sonata no. 6 in F major, Op. 10, no. 2Beethoven as tragic, defiant, fate-protestinghero: this quintessentially Romantic image of the composer continues to casts its spell. it tends to overshadow many other aspects ofthe man—in particular, the importance ofhumor in his work. Jonathan Biss here presentssonatas replete with Beethovenian humor, presented side by side with the most ambitious of the sonatas in the entire cycle, the mightyHammerklavier, which opens the way into newways of thinking about the genre, the instru-ment, and the very nature of musical expression.

in his pathbreaking book e Classical Style,the scholar and pianist charles Rosen encapsu-lates the significant role played by humor andthe comic spirit in general with regard to thestylistic language that Beethoven inherited andtransformed: “e buffoonery of Haydn, Bee -tho ven, and Mozart is only an exaggeration ofan essential quality of the classical style. isstyle was, in its origins, basically a comic one. i do not mean that sentiments of the deepestand most tragic emotion could not be expressedby it, but the pacing of classical rhythm is thepacing of comic opera, its phrasing is the phras-ing of dance music, and its large structures arethese phrases dramatized.”

as the biographer William Kinderman hasnoted (see p. 23 for more background on the setas a whole), the three Op. 10 sonatas publishedin 1798 share certain “comic” gestures of the sort perfected by Haydn, which take the form of “sudden contrasts and unexpectedturns.” He also points to “a whimsical, unpre-dictable humor [that] surfaces in the finales” ofall three Op. 10 sonatas, “most strikingly in theopening allegro” of this sonata in F major.

Beethoven even seems to mock his own ten-dency to obsess over a phrase: listen to his treat-ment of the ornamental turn right aer the firsttwo chords, which ends up being no trivial decoration at all. For Kinderman, this openingmovement suggests something of the “tail wagging the dog” and is, as a whole, “anti-teleological,” in that “the music appears toprogress in fits and starts”—which is to say, as itwere, anti-Beethoven (or a very cliched notionof Bee thoven epitomized by the darkness-to-

light trajectory of, say, the Fih Symphony). Forthe performer, comic music requires nuancedcomic timing.

e mood turns rather more serious in the F minor allegretto, which is graced by a trio inD-flat major. in lieu of a temporary eden be-tween storms (as in Beethoven’s “tempestuous”sonatas), this middle movement is flanked bythe giddy spirits of the opening and the contra-puntally playful presto finale. We can practicallyhear Beethoven laughing here, as if “revoking”any attempt to take too seriously what had beenpresented in the allegretto.

Piano Sonata no. 10 in g major, Op. 14, no. 2e two sonatas published in 1799 as Op. 14(see p. 17 for more background) were intendedfor private, domestic music-making. in contrastto the ambitious, four-movement design of the first four sonatas, this pair reverts to thethree movements characteristic of Mozart’s andHaydn’s solo sonatas.

Beethovenian humor is oen described as“gruff,” but it has other facets as well that cometo the fore in the Sonata in G major—as in therhythmic displacements so central to the lan-guage of the opening allegro. in his commen-taries on the complete sonatas, the pianistRobert Taub observes that this is the first Bee -tho ven sonata to begin with “no chords of anysort.” indeed, the feeling of fantasy imparted by the opening measures is reminiscent of aBaroque prelude. e movement unfolds withconsiderable grace and wit.

ere’s no shortage of chordal writing in thetheme-and-variations andante in c major. evariations actually transpire in the accompa-niment. Unusually, Beethoven ends this sonatawith a rondo-form Scherzo that seems to thumbits nose at the four-square march demeanor ofthe middle movement with comically eccentricaccents and pauses as unpredictable as a gameof musical chairs.

Piano Sonata no. 18 in E-flat major, Op. 31, no. 3, e Huntis sonata, completed in 1802, did not appearin print until 1804, and only in 1805 did it joinits companions as the third of the Op. 31 set

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(see p. 46 for more on Op. 31’s publication history). e lack of autograph scores has ex-acerbated the editing issues that beset Op. 31from the start. What is certain is that Beetho -ven had become impatient to seek out a new“path” as a composer—the image is his own,according to his student czerny, who recalledBeethoven expressing an intent to make a freshstart on his creative work. e Tempest Sonata,published as the second of the Op. 31 set,stakes out daring new territory in Beethoven’ssonatas. His preoccupation with progressivemusical ideas and forms is also apparent,

though in different ways, in this sonata, whichcarries the nickname e Hunt. (e monikeris not as widespread as the “standard” ones likee Tempest, Appassionata, and Waldstein, butbecame attached to the piece in some countriesduring the 19th century—in this case, mostlyin France.)

according to Kinderman, the composer’s“innovative tendencies surface more clearly” in these pieces, in which Beethoven “boldly [explores] artistic territory that he soon consol-idated in the Eroica Symphony.” cast in theEroica key of e-flat major—but in no way akin

The Beethoven Broadwood, manufactured in London in 1817

After receiving word of Broadwood’s gift, Beethoven wrote: “My dearest friend Broadwood, I have never felt a greater pleasure than that given me by the anticipation of the arrival of this piano, with which you are honouring me as a present. I shall regard it as an altar on which I shall place my spirit’s most beautiful offerings to the divine Apollo. As soon as I receive your excellent instrument, I shall send you the fruits of the first moments of inspiration I spend at it, as a souvenir for you from me, my very dear B., and I hope that they will be worthy of your instrument. My dear sir and friend, accept my warmest considera-tion, from your friend and most humble servant, Louis Van Beethoven, Vienna, 3rd February 1818.

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to the “heroism” of the latter work—this sonatais laid out in four movements. interestingly,Beethoven would use a four-movement designagain only in Op. 101 (where it’s actually am-biguous) and Op. 106 (the Hammerklavier),which concludes this program.

e allegro opens with a coy phrase—light -years apart from the determination of the irdSymphony—and even suggests “a continuationof music that had already begun” (Kinderman).e harmonic ground shis subtly, even anticipating the instability of Wagner’s Tristanchord. Yet the ambiguity coexists with an over-all cheerful air.

e ensuing allegretto vivace Scherzo (induple rather than triple meter) makes comicuse of dynamic contrasts. curiously, Beethovenfollows this with a serious minuet (Moderato e grazioso), concluding the sonata with a fiery finale (presto con fuoco) built from obsessivelychasing tarantella rhythms (the origin of theHunt nickname). virtuosity here shows its al-liance with wit and humor.

Piano Sonata no. 29 in B-flat major, Op. 106, Hammerklaviere piano also served as a laboratory for Bee -thoven’s innovative experiments with classicalforms and rhetorical expression: a testingground where he could try out unconventionalsonorities and bold new combinations of ideas.e results have le a continuing mark on pianocomposition. More than two centuries aer itwas completed, Beethoven’s Große Sonate fürdas Hammerklavier in B-flat major, Op. 106, remains a formidable challenge for performersand listeners alike. charles Rosen went so far asto claim that the Hammerklavier does not evensound “typical” of Beethoven, not even of lateBeethoven: “it is an extreme point of his style….in part, it must have been an attempt to breakout of the impasse in which he found himself.”notable already merely for its unprecedentedvast dimensions, “it was an attempt to producea new and original work of uncompromising

greatness.” Rosen adds that “it is just this ex-treme character which makes it a statement ofsuch clarity and allows us to see, as almost noother piece does, the principles by which heworked, particularly at the end of his life;through it we can understand how the totalstructure as well as the details of a work ofBeethoven have such an audible power.”

By the time Beethoven composed the Ham -mer klavier, in 1817–18, the comic spirit of Ros sini had conquered vienna and the agingGerman (though only in his late 40s) fearedbeing regarded by his peers as old-fashioned.ere’s a sense of rousing all his energy here to prove that he was capable of the unprece-dented—not unlike the creative rallying thatfollowed the Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802.

Beethoven dedicated Op. 106 to his friendand patron, the archduke Rudolph. e piecehas become known as the Hammerklavier byway of reference to one of the German words of the era for the then-rapidly evolving piano(describing the keyboard’s hammer mecha-nism). Beethoven was on the point of com-pleting the Hammerklavier when a gi of thelatest Broadwood piano from london arrived.according to the musicologist Tom Beghin,only the final movement corresponds to thespan of this more “modern” piano. He con-cludes that the Hammerklavier “is not somegrand six-and-half-octave piece, but one thatactually combines two ranges” (the six-octaveviennese keyboard of the time for the firstthree movements and the new Broadwoodwith extended bass but actually a more limitedtreble span).

e grandest of Beethoven’s piano sonatas in terms of architectural design—the durationof the piece extends beyond that of several ofhis symphonies—the Hammerklavier evokes asense of uttering “the final word” through itssheer scope and exhaustive treatment of its materials. Beethoven encompasses his ideaswithin a four-movement ground plan that, likethe ninth Symphony—which he was simulta-

neously beginning to sketch out—reverses thetraditional order of the inner movements, pre-ceding the slow movement with a Scherzo. (ina letter the composer actually referred to theHammerklavier as having five movements, con-sidering the largo Introduzione to the finale asa separate fourth movement.)

Yet the classical architecture has been madegigantic. With its sudden attack and massivespan of octaves, the allegro’s opening themejuxtaposes forceful statements and prolongedsilences in a way that recalls the concentratedpower of the opening motto of the Fih Sym -phony. e hugeness of this music is propelledby an unconventional harmonic engine: theprominence given to progression by descend-ing thirds, which drive the progress of the firstmovement’s development section toward the far-distant key of B major. e shi by a half-step tothe home key of B-flat major for the recapitula-tion is, as Rosen puts it, “brutally abrupt.”

Rosen reads the surprisingly compact Scher -zo (assai vivace) as a “parody” of the processesexplored in the first movement—notably, forexample, in the insistent “wrong-note” B natu-

ral that clashes against the tonal context of B-flat major. ere ensues one of the mosttransportive of Beethoven’s slow movements, an extended sonata form adagio sostenuto inF-sharp minor. e key choice continues theharmonic descent of a third (from the B-flatmajor of the first two movements) that is a signature of the Hammerklavier’s tonal plan-ning. Bee thoven, unusually, marks it to beplayed Appassionato e con molto sentimento.e detailed pedal markings likewise point tothe composer’s sensitivity to the ideal timbre hewas imagining for this music. William Kinder -man reminds us that this adagio was oncelikened to “a mausoleum of the collective suf-fering of the world.”

Beethoven’s late-period fascination withBaroque textures and forms is above all appar-ent in the final movement, starting with themysterious largo transition to a vast fugal edifice that, writes Kinderman, “seems not toaffirm a higher, more perfect or serene world ofeternal harmonies, as in Bach’s works, but toconfront an open universe.”

—omas May

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3

Cal Performances’ 2019–20 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo.

Sunday, December 15, 2019, 3pmHertz Hall

Jonathan Biss, piano

ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)e Complete Piano Sonatas 

(Concert 5)

Sonata no. 25 in G major, Op 79, Cuckoopresto alla tedesca

andantevivace

Sonata no. 11 in B-flat major, Op. 22allegro con brio

adagio con molta espressioneMenuetto

Rondo: allegretto

Sonata no. 14 in c-sharp minor, Op. 27, no. 2, Moonlightadagio sostenuto

allegrettopresto agitato

INTERMISSION

Sonata no. 24 in F-sharp major, Op. 78, À érèse adagio cantabile: allegro ma non troppo

allegro vivace

Sonata no. 30 in e major, Op. 109vivace ma non troppo: adagio espressivo

prestissimoGesangvoll, mit innigster empfindung

Piano Sonata no. 25 in g major, Op. 79, CuckooDating from 1809—the year napoleon re-turned to again occupy vienna, when Beetho -ven was working on his Fih piano concerto(Emperor) and the brilliant Sonata Op. 81a (LesAdieux)—this sonata seems like a compara-tively modest effort. it ranks among the short-est of the sonatas, though it unfolds in threemovements. On the surface, its manner evensuggests something of a throwback to early Bee thoven. Yet a great deal is condensed into itsminiature framework—the entire exposition iswell under a minute—and the extrovert attitudeof the start leads to moody detours and turn-on-a-dime shis from major to minor. it’s alsopossible to hear an anticipation of the humor of the opening of the eighth Symphony, anotherunderestimated work whose “backward glances”conceal an innovative spirit.

Beethoven heads the first movement Prestoalla tedesca (referring to a German folk dancein triple meter that moves rapidly), but it hasalso become known by the nickname Cuckoobecause of the suggestive calls of the minorthirds that pervade the development section.(in the Pastoral Symphony, Beethoven had in-troduced another voice of the cuckoo, herald-ing the summer.)

all three movements are centered on thetonic G—the major outer movements framingG minor in the andante, which looks ahead tothe emerging Romantic aesthetic with its liltinggondolier rhythm and its hints of erotic escape.e rondo theme of the vivace finale returns tomirthful G major with an idea that Beethovenwould recycle for his Op. 109 sonata 11 yearslater. e musicologist Kenneth Drake even in-terprets Op. 79’s last movement as a bagatelle—the miniature form to which Beethoven turnedin his solo piano writing aer he stopped com-posing sonatas and aer his epic final set ofvariations (the Diabelli Variations). He notesthat aspects of late Beethoven are already ap-parent here “in widely spaced writing and alsoin the sketchlike transparency of the writing, in which rhythmic combinations and quick register changes that are otherwise not difficultsound complex.”

Piano Sonata no. 11 in B-flat major, Op. 22While Beethoven compresses the sonata into anintimate essence in works like Op. 79, this workproceeds in the opposite direction. His onlyother sonata in the key of B-flat major asidefrom the much-later Hammerklavier (Op. 106),Op. 22 marks the composer’s return to the ambitious, four-movement sonata design hehad most recently explored in the Sonata in D major, Op. 10, no. 3, of 1798.

published by itself and a work of which hewas particularly proud, Op. 22 is the onlysonata Beethoven completed in 1800—the yearin which he introduced his First Symphony. His conception combines big, quasi-orchestral gestures with an outright virtuoso attitude. eboldly articulated sonata form of the allegrocon brio first movement makes do without acoda but feels satisfyingly resolved.

We encounter Beethoven’s proto-Romanticlyrical grace in the adagio con molta espres-sione. e interplay of line and ornament evokesan unwritten opera scenario for some. Startlingcontrasts between the minuet and its trio (tog-gling between major and minor) set the stagefor the surprising developments of the amiablyflowing finale. Overall, the Op. 22 sonata, so un-fairly neglected, is a wise and superbly craedode to the style Beethoven had inherited and,with full deliberation, was crystallizing intosomething unprecedented.

Piano Sonata no. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, no. 2, Moonlightever since Beethoven’s own lifetime, commen-tators have been tempted to trace all manner of biography into the notes—above all, detailsof the composer’s lack of a fulfilling personal relationship. e intimacy of this sonata, for example, has given rise to speculation that Bee -thoven was here encoding the history of his despair over his love for the dedicatee, also apiano pupil of his, the young countess GiuliettaGuic ciardi (one of the former candidates for the“immortal Beloved”).

But still another angle gave rise, posthu-mously, to the nickname that has stuck. in the1830s, the poet-critic ludwig Rellstab’s re-marked that the first movement’s rippling tex-

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tures reminded him of the moonlight over lakelucerne. in “Because” on e Beatles’ AbbeyRoad album, John lennon paid a tribute of hisown by adapting the famous arpeggiated chordsof the adagio sostenuto first movement.

e musicologist Timothy Jones has pro-posed a thought experiment: Why not imaginethe subdued, muted-pedal sonority that pre-dominates here as an image for “Beethoven’simpaired auditory world and—at the sametime—a lament for his loss”? He goes on to caution: “it is all too easy to let such speculationrun wild.” e truly astonishing achievement ofthis c-sharp minor sonata, which Beethovencompleted in 1801, is the impression of fantasythat is sustained in the nocturne-like openingmovement, though it does refer to sonata form.like its companion, Op. 27, no. 1, he titled thisscore Sonata quasi una fantasia (“Sonata in themanner of a fantasy”).

Whatever associations of improvisation themusic evokes, this sonata is constructed as a finale-centered structure whose culminationseems inevitable. e presto agitato drowns outwhatever residual serenity remains of the brief, almost insouciant intermezzo separating theouter movements. its raging arpeggios and brutal attacks reconfigure the rippling motionsof the preludial first movement.

Piano Sonata no. 24 in F-sharp major, Op. 78, À érèsecomposed in 1809, like the sonata with whichJonathan Biss began this program, Op. 78 is theonly one of Beethoven’s piano sonatas in the keyof F-sharp major. is is an inexplicably over-looked gem among the cycle—even though thecomposer himself counted it (along with theAppassionata, its predecessor) among his fa-vorite achievements at the keyboard. We en-counter here an alternative to the “heroic”mode as well as the epic scale that the com-poser had perfected in the Appassionata andWaldstein sonatas. in Op. 78, “the concentra-tion on small thematic motives is characteristicof the organic, meticulously composed worksof the last period… in which every nuance isan integral part of the whole,” observes the pi-anist Robert Taub.

it’s as if Beethoven found a way of proceed-ing beyond the Appassionata’s powerful com-bination of breathtaking bravura and expressiveintensity by changing tack, opting for relativebrevity and avoidance of grandiose sonorities.But we should not mistake the extraordinaryintimacy of Op. 78 for mere modesty of design.like the similarly neglected Op. 54 (overshad-owed by its companion, the Waldstein), Op. 78is cast in only two movements that are both in the same key (F major and F-sharp major inOp. 54 and Op. 78, respectively).

Beethoven dedicated Op. 78 to his pupilcountess érèse von Brunsvik (it is sometimesknown as the Sonata à érèse). She was one of the two sisters, as it happens, of the Appas -sionata’s dedicatee (count von Brunsvik) andyet another candidate for the elusive “immortalBeloved” to whom the composer later sent hisfamous confession of love in 1812. e essen-tially lyrical nature of the longer first movementseems only to enhance that potential associa-tion. as for its compressed distillation of ideas,von Bülow rhapsodized over the brief adagiocantabile introduction, which lasts all of fourbars but contains an immensity of melody andself-revelation. Tantalizingly, the melody itselfnever returns, though it does provide the mo-tivic cell for the main allegro ma non troppo.Beethoven juxtaposes various rhythmic treat-ments of the material, first in quarter notes,then in sixteenths and triplets.

Meanwhile, as Robert Taub observes, “dis-tinctions between melody and accompanimentbegin to dissolve,” thus posing a particular challenge for the performer to delineate “eachtheme individually but nonetheless to weavethem all into a carefully constructed, lumines-cent musical fabric.”

e shorter allegro vivace, while in thesame key, manifests a character notably differ-ent from that of the quasi-Schubertian firstmovement. its saucy rhythmic slurs and dy-namic contrasts update Haydnesque wit, whilethe main theme incorporates a tongue-in-cheek reference to the tune “Hail, Britannia”(for which Beethoven had written variationsin 1803).

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Piano Sonata no. 30 in E major, Op. 109in 1820—a year that marked the resolution of a long period of emotional turmoil and crisis,as the composer was nearing 50—Beethovenaccepted a commission from his Berlin pub-lisher to write three new piano sonatas. e biographer Maynard Solomon notes that thecomposer, who was “battered and torn from the stresses” of the previous years, could now“set about reconstructing his life and completinghis life’s work.” Beethoven took until 1822 to fin-ish the last of these sonatas; his only other majorwork for piano to appear aer them would be themonumental Diabelli Variations. Signifi cantly,Beethoven assigned each of these three sonatasa separate opus number, and each embodies adistinctive character and even philosophy.Jonathan Biss has made these works the respec-tive culminating points of each of the last threeprograms in his complete Beethoven cycle.

at the same time, there are connectionsamong these three sonatas. all of them trans-form musical elements familiar from classicalvocabulary into novel new formations. eirscores are filled with curious reversals of signi-fication as well: “major ideas” become com-pressed rather than elaborated, while trills andarpeggios, devices normally associated withmere ornamentation, are glorified into signifi-cant but elusive gestures.

also shared by the final trilogy is a singularuse of contrast, both on the large scale and in

local contexts. e opening movement of thissonata in e major, for example, juxtaposes vi-vace against adagio espressivo and uses a changeof meter to distinguish the chorale-like firsttheme from the improvisatory texture of thesecond. e prestissimo second movement, ine minor, deploys dynamic contrasts of so andviolently loud.

e first two movements are in tightly com-pressed sonata form, but together they aredwarfed by the final movement. Here, Beetho -ven juxtaposes languages to delineate his tempoand expressive markings, using italian and Ger -man: Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung(“songful, with innermost feeling”) and Andantemolto cantabile ed espressivo.

is finale unfolds as a set of six variations(only the first four of them numbered as such)on the two-part theme whose rhythmic pro-file has been compared to that of a sarabande, the ceremonial Baroque dance in triple meter.Beethoven’s procedure here is to expand thescope of the underlying theme that is being var-ied into unexpected realms, including a fugatofor the fih and a rhapsodic efflorescence in thesixth and final variation—all capped by a returnto the stark simplicity of the theme itself. as inthe parallel return to the aria in Bach’s GoldbergVariations, Beethoven leaves us with a feelingthat its essence has been informed by the in-tervening experience—and thus permanentlychanged.

—omas May

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St. Michael’s Square, Vienna, ca. 1800. Burg theater (the German theater) is far right

Portrait of Beethoven in 1823 by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller

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Cal Performances’ 2019–20 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo.

Saturday, March 7, 2020, 8pmHertz Hall

Jonathan Biss, piano

ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)e Complete Piano Sonatas 

(Concert 6)

Sonata no. 19 in G minor, Op. 49, no. 1andante

Rondo: allegro

Sonata no. 16 in G major, Op. 31, no .1allegro vivace

adagio graziosoRondo: allegretto

Sonata no. 7 in D major, Op. 10, no. 3presto

largo e mestoMenuetto: allegro

Rondo: allegro

INTERMISSION

Sonata no. 2 in a major, Op. 2, no. 2allegro vivace

largo appassionatoScherzo: allegrettoRondo: Grazioso

Sonata no. 31 in a-flat major, Op. 110Moderato cantabile molto espressivo

allegro moltoadagio ma non troppo

Piano Sonata no. 19 in g minor, Op. 49, no. 1Disregard the relatively high opus number ofthis work. e music is a product of Beethoven’syears as a performing virtuoso in vienna in thelate 1790s. He merely waited to publish this setof modest sonatas until nearly a decade later.(See p. 27 for more background on Op. 49.)

e gently doleful theme of the andante that opens this sonata—so far removed from the breathless pathos Mozart associated withthis key—reminds us of the melodic gi withwhich Beethoven charmed his audiences. in theRondo: allegro, which turns to G major, good-humored rhythmic frolics alternate teasingly be-tween light and shade.

Piano Sonata no. 16 in g major, Op. 31, no. 1e publication history of Op. 31 is unusuallycomplicated. Beethoven agreed to write threenew sonatas for zurich-based publisher Georgnägeli during the half year he spent in the vien -nese suburb of Heiligenstadt in 1802. When thefirst two sonatas of the set came back from theprinter in 1803, the enraged composer workedout a re-publication deal with another publisheron account of the sloppy editing, which had resulted in a profusion of errors—and even the arbitrary insertion of a few measures composedby the publisher. e three sonatas that com-prise Op. 31 appeared together only in 1805. Stillanother publisher, based in vienna, brought outall three that same year, but under a differentopus number. e autograph scores have disap-peared, so editing questions continue to bedevilthese works. Unusually, there are no verifieddedications.

e first sonata of the Op. 31 set has beenovershadowed by its dramatic neighbor, the D minor sonata known as e Tempest (no. 2 inthe set, though it was finished before this piece).likewise, the sense of subversive humor that thisG major sonata manifests is a quality that has been relatively undervalued in Bee thoven’smusic. is is especially so with regard to theidea governing the allegro vivace first move-ment. Beethoven begins with tricky synco-pations that create an auditory illusion of thepianist’s hands being off kilter—precisely where

they need to be laser-precise in timing. He ex-tends this ploy so that, when the hands do finallycome together in very demonstrative fashion,the result is genuinely comic. Harmonic adven-ture also abounds as Beethoven veers towardkeys not expected or prepared for in conven-tional classical style.

e adagio grazioso—one of the longest ofBeethoven’s slow movements—contains anotherbrand of humor. in part, this may be construedas parody, starting with the exaggerated trill that launches the movement. almost absurdlydrawn-out ornamentation begins to sound suspect. Beethoven’s target here is the frivoloussalon music of his peers, as well as the preeningof contemporary italian opera. at the same time,moments of seemingly straightforward affectcomplicate the picture.

playing with expectations is again a theme ofthe Rondo finale, where rhythmic displacementand pauses are used with cleverly subversive intent. in the coda, Beethoven speeds the musicup to a breakneck presto in a gesture that SirDonald Tovey likened to “fitful giggling.”

Piano Sonata no. 7 in D major, Op. 10, no. 3Of the three works gathered as Op. 10 (see p. 23for more background on the set, which was pub-lished in 1798), this D major sonata is the mostambitious. Some regard it as the first real “masterpiece” of the 32 sonatas, particularlywith regard to its intricate crasmanship. its twocompanions are cast in three movements each,but here Beethoven calls for four movementsthat encompass an extraordinary emotionalspectrum. e forward-looking, experimentalhumor of the Op. 10 set as a whole—and humorrepresents one of this composer’s most radicaltools—frames a tragic slow movement in theminor key that Tovey hailed as nothing less thana “landmark in musical history.” e large-scalearchitecture of this sonata is rooted in the use of the same tonic (D—major and minor) for allfour movements.

charles Rosen reminds us of the importanceof Beethoven’s mastery of the Well-TemperedClavier as an adolescent. e presto first move-ment derives from the most elemental mate-

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rial—the descending D major tetrachord (fournotes) played as octaves at the outset. “For thecapacity to draw inspiration from the smallestmotif, Beethoven has no rivals in music his-tory with the possible exception of Bach,” Rosen observes. e dynamism generated by thismovement is thrilling, dramatic, and bracinglyoptimistic.

e slow movement is designated largo emesto. Only in the adagio of the String Quartetno. 7 (Op. 59, no. 1) does Beethoven again usethe term mesto (“mournful”). it’s interesting tonote that among Beethoven’s other works fromthe period of Op. 10, the adagio of his FirstString Quartet (Op. 18, no. 1—also in D minor)has been suggested as similar in tragic profun-dity. at this point in his life (only in his late 20s),Beethoven’s ability to convey despair and emo-tional darkness is already remarkable. as in thelater Eroica’s Funeral March, he stages a patternof emerging solace, only to be crushed again byfutility and hopelessness.

e Menuetto provides relief while also pre -paring, with its Trio section, for the rousinglycomic spirit of the finale (which nonethelessmakes reference to the tragic slow movementbefore brushing that aside). in this allegro,Beethoven again gets enormous mileage fromthe simplest material, playing with contrasts andpauses to confound our expectations.

Piano Sonata no. 2 in A major, Op. 2, no. 2Beethoven obviously intended to make a boldstatement with his first official batch of pianosonatas. (See pp. 17 for more background onOp. 2.) Or, rather, a series of bold statements: a powerful, dramatic sonata in the minor toopen the set (the Sonata in F minor), a brilliant,at times almost symphonic closer (the Sonatain c major), and this vividly inventive, ani-mated work.

like the D major sonata we heard at the endof the program’s first half, this Sonata in a majorbegins with a straightforward, call-to-attentionoctave statement in both hands. But the direc-tions this allegro vivace then takes are anythingbut straightforward. notice especially the har-monic stealth with which the composer intro-

duces the second theme. Our images of the re-bellious young Beethoven notwithstanding, theyoung artist worked hard to learn the art ofcounterpoint, which is proudly on display here.as we experience so oen in the later sonatas,his acclaimed virtuosity at the keyboard is alliedto spellbinding wit and imagination.

ere follows a prayerful song-form largoappassionato (what a curious descriptive for a slow movement!), accompanied by a kind ofwalking bass line beneath slow-moving hymnchords. a dramatically extended coda suggestsan operatic farewell. e allegretto Scherzo recalls something of the sparkling, elegant dynamism of the opening movement, with aswerve to a minor for the trio. Marked Grazi -oso, the finale integrates an ingratiating arpeggiosweep into its cheerful theme. another returnto a minor spices the central episode with chro- matic drama—but how quickly Beethoven dis-pels the clouds, freeing the way for a deliciouslysubtle ending.

Piano Sonata no. 31 in A-flat major, Op. 110Referring to Beethoven’s late quartets, Schu -mann once observed that they are works “for whose greatness no words can be found.”countless listeners have experienced similar reactions to the final series of piano sonatas, inwhich Beethoven forged the language of his latestyle. and it is above all in the last three sonatas(Op. nos. 109, 110, and 111 [see p. 42 for morebiographical background on their composi-tion]) that the piano—the instrument Bee -thoven could no longer play in public—becomesthe medium for a music of ineffable, visionaryintensity.

like a shed skin, the materiality of sound itself—by now a ghostly presence for the deafcomposer—seems to dissolve as Beethovenvoices the sorts of deeper intuitions about existence that we associate with religious or evenmystical thought. around this time, Beethovenwas also preoccupied with his ongoing Missasolemnis project. alfred Brendel famouslylikened the third movement of Op. 110, with itsinterplay of Baroque forms of arioso and fugue,to “passion music.”

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continued on p. 52

Beethoven's funeral on March 29th, 1827, by F. Stober; his funeral procession was attended by an estimated20,000 Viennese citizens.

4

Cal Performances’ 2019–20 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo.

Sunday, March 8, 2020, 3pmHertz Hall

Jonathan Biss, piano

ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)e Complete Piano Sonatas 

(Concert 7)

Sonata no. 8 in c minor, Op. 13, PathétiqueGrave: allegro di molto e con brio

adagio cantabileRondo: allegro

Sonata no. 22 in F major, Op. 54in tempo d’un menuetto

allegretto

Sonata no. 26 in e-flat major, Op. 81a, Les Adieuxadagio: allegro

andante espressivovivacissimamente

INTERMISSION

Sonata no. 32 in c minor, Op. 111Maestoso: allegro con brio ed appassionatoarietta: adagio molto semplice e cantabile

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Piano Sonata no. 8 in C minor, Op. 13, pathétiqueJonathan Biss has framed this final installmentof his epic sonata cycle with two c minor sonatasthat encapsulate the astonishing odyssey of Bee -thoven’s art between his early sonatas and thework with which he took leave of the genre.

When listening to a committed performanceof the Op. 13 sonata, we can readily imagine theimpression young Beethoven must have madeon his contemporaries—both in his style ofplaying and in the expressive power of his imag-ination as a composer. ough this piece al-ready marks more than a quarter of the way(numerically) through the 32 sonatas (the twoOp. 49 sonatas were written earlier), the Pathé -tique is an early work, dating from 1798, whenBeethoven was still in his late 20s. already hehas appropriated the tonality of c minor andgiven it a personal stamp. Here, as in the irdpiano con certo and Fih Symphony, he im-bues the key with a defiantly tragic pathos.

is is the first of Beethoven’s sonatas to beara familiar nickname. e French adjective,meant to evoke the music’s particular emotionalquality, is in this context closer to the connota-tions of appassionato. e influence of Frenchmusical rhetoric on Beethoven’s language is alsomanifest here. its most obvious markers are the dotted rhythms and dignified tragic air of the opening slow introduction. a strikingstructural feature of the Pathétique is the recur-rence of music from this slow introductionwithin the allegro di molto e con brio. Beetho -ven splices it several times—in an almost cinematic manner—into the body of the firstmovement. He also uses accentuation and sfor -zando to startling effect.

Have you ever heard the nonsensical claimthat Beethoven had a hard time writing a sim-ple melody? You need simply point to theadagio cantabile for a heavenly example of hislyrical gi. in the midst of this slow movement,Beethoven unleashes a brief tempest, but theSturm und Drang is soothed by the potency ofthe main melody. e theme of the finale sub-liminally recalls the agitated second theme fromthe first movement.

Piano Sonata no. 22 in F major, Op. 54While craing the Op. 53 Waldstein Sonasta in1803–04, Beethoven wrote a full-scale slowmovement that he ultimately decided to reject (it was thought to make the Waldstein overlylong) and publish separately. is became knownas the Andante favori (WoO 57) in F major—thekey of this Op. 54 sonata, whose opening themeshares something of the Andante favori’s easy-going nature. at the same time, its dotted rhythmanticipates the start of the Appassionata Sonata,which Beethoven was already sketching out.

at Op. 54 is surrounded by these two fa-mous and powerful giants (the Waldstein andAppassionata) might explain why this modestlyproportioned piece ranks among the least-known works in Beethoven’s sonata cycle.perhaps, though, this neglect also results fromOp. 54’s arch ambiguity: in a sense, the F majorSonata is a piece of meta-music that playfullyinterrogates the genre’s identity.

e prototype of a two-movement sonata wasnot Beethoven’s invention. ere are manyprecedents in Haydn, whose presence is keenlyfelt here. at the same time, Beethoven’s formaleconomy—an intense concision that never-theless allows for striking contrasts—anticipatesthe experiments of the later sonatas. e open-ing movement even swerves away from sonataform. it’s as if he decided to leave out an open-ing movement and begin off the bat with adance movement that alternates between tworadically different themes. e relaxed grace ofthe first theme is rudely pushed aside by thethorny accents, in double octaves, of the second.near the end comes a moment that foreshadowsthe andante con moto of the Fih Symphony,on which Beethoven had also begun working.

e second movement is also in F major. it spins out a single theme in perpetual mo-tion—another feature that links it to the ideasBeethoven was shaping for the Appassio nataSonata, whose finale is in the same meter andsimilarly restlessly driven.

astonishing harmonic detours give varietyto the monothematic material. like the twosonatas surrounding it, the F major Sonata endswith a coda in accelerated tempo.

Piano Sonata no. 26 in E-flat major, Op. 81a, Les adieuxOpus 81a is Beethoven’s only explicitly (thoughin the broadest sense) “programmatic” sonata.it was published with the composer’s own de-scriptive title: Das Lebewohl. ironically, in lightof the French invasion of 1809 that inspired it, the work has become better known as LesAdieux. e publisher insisted on the Frenchphrase as being more marketable, much to thechagrin of Bee thoven, who protested that theGerman word more closely conveyed the spiritof the music. Lebewohl, he pointed out, “is saidin a warm-hearted manner to one person” (inthis case, the young archduke Rudolf of austria)rather than to a collective. e narrative, suchas it is, however, is minimalist. Rather like thepresentation of single “affects” in Baroque style,each of Op. 81a’s three movements focuses onone stage in the sequence “Farewell,” “absence,”and “Return.”

a substantial slow introduction signals the intensity and emotional weight that distinguishthis masterful sonata. e first three chords encode the cell for the entire first movement (the“Farewell”—three syllables in the German, Lebe -wohl), their descent veering from an implied e-flat major to c minor. is poignant ambigu-ity colors not only the introduction but also thecharacter of the richly developed allegro, whosewidely ranging first theme and energetic contourmetaphorically suggest the image of wandering(and the anxiety of those le behind). e de-scending “Farewell” motif is threaded into thesecond theme and then sent through variousharmonic detours in the development. Bee -tho ven reorganizes sonata form itself to explorethe concept of departure (and hoped-for return);tellingly, the coda is even more extensive, endingwith a touching series of elegiac envois.

e interlude-like structure of the WaldsteinSonata’s middle movement is echoed here in the andante espressivo movement (“absence”),which similarly suggests a suspenseful recitative.Dissonance and harmonic irresolution intensifythe pain of separation—and the overpoweringjoy that bursts out in the finale (“Return”), whichfollows without pause. calling for the unusual

tempo designation Vivacissimamente, Beetho venleads into the main rondo theme through a pro-logue of passionate, almost erotic, frenzy.

e sturdiness of this theme arrives as a hugerelief and counters the instability preceding it.But reminiscences of what has been experiencedintrude in new harmonic digressions. Much ofBeethoven’s figuration here has a concertantequality that practically implies an orchestra. ecoda, slowing for a spell to poco andante, offersa powerful retrospective glance before a finalheadlong rush to rejoice in the safe reunion.

Piano Sonata no. 32 in C minor, Op. 111a leave-taking of the most profound sort isstaged in Op. 111. Here, Beethoven bids adieu tohis piano sonata oeuvre by composing a sonatathat consists of only two movements. Retro -spective, forward-looking, and timeless qualitiesall coexist in this music. its expressive range hasprompted many commentators to resort to thelanguage of religious revelation and philosophi-cal speculation. Hans von Bülow, himself a vir-tuoso pianist, found in the pairing a musicalcounterpart to the Buddhist ideas of “Samsaraand nirvana,” while the english music writerWilfrid Mellers suggested a metaphysical oppo-sition of “becoming and being.”

in his novel A Room with a View, e. M.Forster has his heroine lucy Honeychurch playthe first movement, which the musicologistMichelle Fillion interprets as “an emblem forlucy’s yearning to escape this stranglehold ofthe Ewig-Weibliche [eternal feminine] and jointhe ranks of the new Woman in a man’s world.”it’s interesting to note that while Beethovendedi cated the first edition to archduke Ru -dolph, the english edition bore a dedication toantonie Brentano, another of the candidates forthe composer’s “immortal Beloved.”

e first movement immediately summonsboth the defiantly tragic and heroic aspects of thec minor persona we encountered in the Pathé -tique. is is distilled through a neo-Baroquesensibility, in terms of rhythmic aspects (per-petual motion and dotted rhythms) as well as density of texture (the intricately contrapuntalworking out of ideas). e thunderous chords of

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the maestoso introduction—which look ahead to the ninth Symphony—establish a scenariothat requires resolution.

Yet Beethoven revokes the dramatic dialecticof classical sonata form in favor of a paradoxicalsimplicity. e effect is of profound peace at-tained aer great struggle. c minor’s major-keyantipode, already introduced quietly at the end of the first movement, prepares the way for the slow variation movement (adagio moltosemplice e cantabile), whose theme is as free of guile as a child’s song. Who could have expected

what characters this song encompasses, in itsprofound simplicity? Beethoven’s variationsgradually speed up, reaching an ecstatic state ofjazz-like rhythmic grooves, before being pareddown and leaving us with a vision of other-worldly serenity.

according to charles Rosen, the arietta finalmovement “succeeds as almost no other work in suspending the passage of time at its climax.”and in this final sonata, Beethoven proves to be“the greatest master of musical time.”

—omas May

a drive toward concision marks the firstmove ment of this sonata. ecstatic arpeggiationsanticipate the prelude to Wagner’s Parsifal bymore than half a century. ey contrast with themuscular, syncopated chords of the Scherzo,which lead directly into one of Beethoven’sstrangest formal conceptions: a fusion of oper-atic and instrumental idioms from the Baroquesetting the stage for a powerful finale that serves to anchor the entirety of Op. 110.

Here, Beethoven seems to look ahead to theinterplay of voice and instrument that wouldemerge in the finale of the ninth Symphony of1824: the implicit vocalism of the minor-key arioso dolente (“songlike lament”) is juxtaposedwith an animated fugue whose theme derivesfrom the opening movement’s main theme. esecond appearance of the lament breaks off in a startling passage of repeated G major chords,announcing the return of the fugue, in variedform—and with it, a reaffirmation of the will, an assent to life itself.

—omas May

PROgRAM nOTES (cont. from p. 47)