Beethoven's Fifth Symphony --- A Critical Review

The first movement of Beethoven’s famous 5th symphony opens with a striking first four notes. These first four chords are ominous and leave the listener unsure of what to expect next. Instead of carrying on in this dark tone, Beethoven switches to a lighter, sounding tune, although not quite bright or happy. In this passage, Beethoven uses spiccato to give the music a lighter, airier tune that builds up to the repetition of the famous clause that started the music, although slightly altered to be a little less grand-sounding. The next phrase includes what sounds like a call and response between the upper strings and the winds, building in anticipation until the climax of the first theme, ending in a solo from the horns. From here there is a short transition into the second theme. 

The second theme, if placed side by side with the first theme, might feel very out of character. 

Unlike Mozart’s music where there is a natural flow from the first theme to the second, Beethoven’s compositions require bridges between the first and second themes to tie them together. This mini-development helps connect the main ideas of the themes better in the listener’s mind. The second is much more upbeat and straightforward, but it does not lose the grandeur and regality that the first theme manages to convey. The first and second theme repeat, further conveying the juxtaposing ominousness of the first theme with the upbeat gaiety of the second theme.

The first movement of Beethoven’s 5th symphony starts off with four world-famous notes played by the lower strings and clarinets: GGGF, played short-short-short LONG. The famous refrain is then repeated a step lower. These four notes leave the listener with a sense of dread and anticipation for the music to come. The notes are filled with suspense, but the suspenseful theme is not necessarily carried on for the rest of the movement. Suddenly, the strings move into a piano, developing the opening motif. A long crescendo and loud chords lead back to the opening motif, this time played by the full orchestra, followed by the same sudden pianissimo. There is a crescendo and ascension, giving the music a lighter, airier tone which is juxtaposed with the timpani drums. Suddenly there is a stop in the music, and the horns have their call motif, which acts as a transition to the second theme of the sonata allegro.

The second theme of Beethoven’s 5th starts out very differently than the first theme. Unlike the suspenseful, dense, heavy opening to the first theme, the second theme opens gently. It is played first by the lower strings and then they are joined by the upper strings. This time the tone is more jubilant and happy. It employs flutes, piccolo, and the upper strings to reinforce the difference between the tones of the first and second themes instead of relying on the lower strings, brass, and timpani. Towards the end of the second theme the woodwinds and horns have a rapid descent, preparing the listener’s ears and minds for the repetition of the Exposition, a quick jump back to the somberness of the first theme.

In Beethoven’s first movement, unlike the music of Mozart and other composers, there is a transition between the first and second themes. Because the ideas and flavors of the two themes are so different, a transition is used to prepare the listener for the tones to come. Even though the switch in tones is not necessarily logical, the transition does help bridge the two ideas.

Next, Beethoven moves onto the development. The development opens with a horn motif in a fortissimo, followed by the low strings, then high chords from woodwinds and brass, still held in a strong fortissimo. Suddenly, there is another horn call, this time accompanied by the full orchestra and a couple key changes, the tonic and dominant keys “battling it out.” The opening motif is repeated one last time, and the Recapitulation begins.

The first theme, transition, and second theme are played once again to remind the listener of the ideas explored in the opening portion of the sonata allegro. The Recapitulation is followed closely by the coda, which is very short. Towards the beginning of the coda there are short, forceful, repeated chords with long pauses to give the phrase a dramatic air. The horn-call is again repeated by the lower strings and bassoons along with a new violin melody in the tonic key. A short descending pattern in the violins leads to a completely new theme that seems to be leading up, something that the listener now more closely relates to the second theme in the Exposition and Recapitulation.

Once again, the fast, loud, opening motif of four notes is repeated by the full orchestra and the movement ends in a forceful fortissimo.

The format of the second movement is themes and variations, but it differs from most theme/variation movements by classical composers because, unlike those that have one theme and many variations, the second movement of Beethoven’s 5th symphony has two themes each with their own variations. The first theme starts out in the Tonic key (A flat major). The theme is first played out by the lower strings, but the melody is later picked up by the woodwinds. The melody continues with a call and response type alternation between the woodwinds and the strings. The second theme is first carried out by the clarinets, and is also in the tonic key (still A flat major). Suddenly, the clarinet theme is taken over by the violins, and the music crescendos as it transitions to a brass fanfare and a key change. The violins take back over the theme, but continue it as a pianissimo, signaling an end to the second theme.

The first variation is a variation on the first theme, written in the tonic. The melody is played by the violas and cellos, reinforced by longer nots by the clarinets. The first variation contains many notes from Theme One. The second variation is a variation on the second theme, and is more active. This variation (1B) is also played on the clarinet, but accompanied by fanfare from the brass section. This variation has many sustained chords, and spiccato chords from the lower strings, and the variation ends in a cadence. The third variation is 2A, back to a variation on the first theme. This variation has the smooth rhythm of the first variation, but is played twice as fast. 

This variation, played predominantly by the woodwinds, is embellished by the violins, and later by the lower basses. The variation is ended by rising scales. The third variation is 3A, a third variation on the first theme. In this variation, however; the melody is played by the full orchestra, concluded with rising scales and call/responses between the violins and flutes.

The coda comes at a faster tempo, and is started by a single bassoon and one oboe, who play a passage based on the opening of the movement. The tempo slows to the original tempo, the flute and strings join, and the last section of the first theme is played yet again by the violins. There is a cadence in tonic, and the intensity of the movement builds to a full cadence played by the full orchestra to end the coda.

The third movement is played in the scherzo and trio formation. This is the same format as a minuet and a trio, but a scherzo is generally much faster and more vigorous than a minute. The opening of the scherzo begins hesitantly, but builds to a blasting horn section which is repeated later by the full orchestra. The short-short-short-LONG rhythm of the first movement is repeated at the end of the scherzo.

The trio begins with the first section, a quick melody of unaccompanied cellos and bases. The second section of the trio has a few “false starts” where the orchestra begins to build, but never reaches the climax of the phrase. Finally, the full orchestra leaps into the melody with a forte and a melody carried by the woodwinds.

Next, the scherzo returns with the original minor medley. The themes are carried out by the bassoons and cellos, and is embellished by pizzicato strings. There is powerful horn segment and more pizzicato strings. There is a cadence, and then the short-short-short-LONG returns for the end of the scherzo. Finally, there is a short transition to the last movement, marked by a long, low, ominous string note and timpani drums.

The fourth and final movement is the epic conclusion of Beethoven’s 5th symphony. The last movement, like the first, is in C major and sonata form. In this movement, however; Beethoven introduces four themes, but the overall tone changes to one that is bright, cheery, and leaves the listener with a resounding feeling of optimism. The first theme is march-like and is played by the entire orchestra, but the trumpets and brass are exceptionally prominent. 

This theme is in the tonic, C major. The second melody or transitional theme is also forceful, played in a fortissimo, and is also brought in by the horns. The third theme is light and played by the upper strings, the violins. This theme is played in the dominant key, G major. This theme is exposed with the short-short-short-LONG that is known around the world. The fourth and final theme is presented by the strings and woodwinds, and immediately repeated by the full orchestra at a forte, with repeating chords and ascending crescendo to a fortissimo. The whole exposition is repeated and the development begins.

The development utilizes the triplets that are played in the third theme with slowly ascending scales on the flute. Next, the short-short-short-LONG is played one more time by the strings, but in a pianissimo, transitioning to the recapitulation.

The recapitulation repeats themes 1, 2, 3, and 4, which lead to the coda. The coda further develops the third theme, and then variates into theme two. There is a series of piccolo scales followed by a return of the strings and an accelerando until the repetition of theme four by the violins. The full orchestra gradually joins in and then the first theme is once again repeated by the full orchestra in a fortissimo at a much higher tempo. 

The full orchestra until the grand finale, the whole orchestra playing a concert C in a forceful fortissimo.

An Awesome Spin On Beethoven The Piano Trios in 2020

Piano Trio in E-flat major, Op. 1, No. 1 (1795)

The three trios known as “Op. 1” were not the first set of compositions by Beethoven to appear in print:  after all, he had written three piano sonatas at the age of twelve that were published with a dedication to the Elector of Cologne.  Yet by calling a group of mature works explicitly “Op. 1,” the 24-year-old Beethoven was sending the world a message that he was embarking on a career as a professional composer.  With twelve years of experience and a newly-won fame as a piano virtuoso in Vienna, the city that mattered the most in the world of music, Beethoven was definitely ready.

Dedicated to one of Beethoven's aristocratic patrons, Prince Lichnowsky, the three piano trios proclaim, loud and clear, that a major new voice had appeared on the scene.  The piano trios of Haydn and Mozart were always in three movements.  Beethoven added one more movement that he already called a “scherzo” in two of the three trios—as opposed to the minuet that had long been customary in string quartets.

The very first phrase of the first trio brings a surprise:  a note foreign to the main tonality (D-flat) is heard as early as the third measure.  This unusual move sets the stage for a movement where the traditional conventions, although observed, are stretched in all sorts of interesting ways.  In the heartfelt Adagio cantabile, the second movement, the returns of the lyrical main melody are graced with elaborate written-out embellishments, giving us an idea of how Beethoven might have improvised at the piano.  The third-movement Scherzo is the first of many Beethovenian examples of tonal ambiguity:  the key of E-flat major is not confirmed until measure 16.  After a delicately scored middle section (‟trio”) and a return of the scherzo, Beethoven, in another unusual move, adds a few extra measures in which the strong closure of the scherzo is effectively demolished in favor of a hushed and mysterious ending.

The word ‟scherzo” means joke, but Beethoven’s finale is possibly even funnier than his third movement.  The playful skips of its primary theme introduce a sparkling sonata form filled with surprises, such as distant modulations, dynamic contrasts, and more.  In spite of the undeniable influence of Haydn and Mozart on young Beethoven, we would never find a movement like this among the works of those masters.

Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 1, No. 3 (1795)

Many qualities commonly associated with the “heroic” Beethoven of the middle years are already on display in this early work.  The  special emotional climate associated with the key of C minor in the Pathétique sonata or the Fifth Symphony makes its first appearance just a few years after Mozart’s death, at a time when Joseph Haydn was still actively composing.  Haydn must have felt that his erstwhile pupil had gone a little too far; he reportedly “doubted whether this trio would be easily understood and accepted by the public”—certainly a veiled criticism.  In the event, Haydn’s worries notwithstanding, the three trios had a resounding success in Vienna’s musical circles. 

The musical events happening in the first few seconds of the C-minor trio (energetic opening gesture, hesitant stop on a fermata, agitated continuation) strike a brand-new tone, and the movement as a whole more than lives up to the expectations of such an unusual beginning.  Alternations of extremes (turbulence and gentleness, very soft and very loud volume), novel modulations into distant keys and other musical surprises enrich the musical language.  The cello, which, in the trios of Haydn and Mozart, was often treated merely as a provider of harmonic support, plays a few prominent solos, in an important step toward the complete equality of the three instruments realized in Beethoven’s later trios.

The second movement is a set of variations on a cantabile (eminently singable) theme of utmost simplicity.  In the course of five variations, the theme receives the usual virtuoso figurations, but it seems that the changes in melodic character were much more important to Beethoven than mere technical display.  The piano melody of the first variation is more memorable than the theme itself in its intense lyricism.  In the second, the roles of the three instruments (melody and accompaniment) change with great frequency, resulting in a novel instrumental texture.  In the third, the pizzicato (plucked) notes of the strings are particularly effective against the fast notes of the piano. The fourth brings sighing accents, unsettling syncopations and chromatic progressions along with the dark key of E-flat minor (with six flats!).  

The staccato (separated) notes of the piano and the double-stops of the violin enliven the fifth and last variations, leading into the coda that recapitulates motives heard separately in some of the earlier episodes.  (German musicologist Helga Lühning has pointed out that one of Beethoven’s shorter piano works, the Bagatelle Op. 119, No. 2, is so close to this movement that it could almost qualify as another variation on the same theme.  Despite its high opus number, this bagatelle was actually written as early as the 1790s.)

The third movement is not quite the graceful “minuet” its designation in the score would suggest—but it is not a playful scherzo either.  Its main theme is related to the agitated motive from the first movement, but it is put in even sharper relief here.  In the trio, the tonality changes from minor to major and the mood brightens up accordingly.  The fast runs of the piano alternate with a simple but engaging melody in the cello.

High drama returns in the finale, significantly marked Prestissimo.  After a few introductory measures that function as a musical “curtain,” the violin intones a main theme full of nervous tension.  Its insistent minor thirds are subsequently developed in an almost maniacal fashion; a more relaxed second theme brings only temporary calm.  The movement ends with a most astonishing coda.  For the first time, Beethoven used a strategy to which he would often return in his later works:  just when one would expect the music to settle down in the home tonality, a surprise modulation sends the harmony off into very distant regions.  In this instance, Beethoven resolved this last-minute complication only to make another unheard-of move.  He modulated into C major without resolving any of the dramatic tensions: the soft C-major scales of the piano against the quarter-notes of the string instruments, repeated ostinato (without any changes), end the work on an oddly mysterious note.

Beethoven himself thought particularly highly of this early work of his.  More than twenty years later he returned to it and made an arrangement for string quintet, which he published in 1819 as Op.104.

Piano Trio in D major, Op. 70, No. 1 (‟Ghost,” 1808)

We don’t know who gave Beethoven’s D-major trio the nickname ‟Ghost” but, as nicknames go, this one is singularly apt.  There is something undoubtedly ‟spooky” about the work’s central Largo, and even though it is framed by two cheerful fast movements, it is the memory of the Largo that lingers in most listeners’ minds as they leave the concert.

Along with its companion work in E-flat (Op. 70, No. 2), this trio marks the first time Beethoven returned to the piano-violin-cello combination since the three Op. 1 trios of 1795.  In the meantime, the composer had created many of his greatest works:  six symphonies, five concertos, the opera Fidelio, more than twenty piano sonatas and nine string quartets.  The piano trio was a medium associated with private chamber music parties in aristocratic salons; the two trios Op. 70 were dedicated to the Hungarian Countess Erdődy, in whose Viennese palace they were first performed.  Yet there is something in these works that the sumptuously decorated walls of the Countess’s music salon can’t seem to contain. 

The unison melody at the beginning of the ‟Allegro vivace con brio” shoots up with uncommon energy, only to stop abruptly on a note outside the key of D major.  A new, lyrical melody appears; it, too, picks up considerable dramatic momentum as it is developed.  The exposition is relatively brief but extremely intense.  In the development, the two themes previously heard are combined contrapuntally in constantly changing configurations.  The recapitulation temporarily darkens the mood by an unexpected modulation from D major to D minor, but it soon recaptures the upbeat energy of the opening.

The D-minor that was adumbrated in a few measures in the first movement takes center stage in the second.  Sketches to this ‟Largo assai ed espressivo” were found on the same page where Beethoven had also jotted down ideas for an opera based on Macbeth that was never written.  We will never know whether there is a connection between the Largo of the piano trio and the witches in Macbeth.  Yet the unusual harmonies, the eerie tremolos and the sudden outbursts of this music are indications that Beethoven had something extremely dramatic in mind.  This Largo has an atmosphere not found in any other of Beethoven’s works (or anyone else’s, for that matter).

The dark clouds vanish without a trace in the concluding Presto, a sparkling movement full of playful melodies and delicious harmonic surprises.  At the same time, there is plenty of that Romantic fire that heralds a new century and with it, a whole new era in the history of music.

Credits : 

Peter Laki 

Cleveland Chamber Music 

Beethoven The Complete String Trios -- Performed By The Zurich String Trio A Critical Review

My favorite recordings of Beethoven's string trios, out of a very crowded field, are with the Leopold Trio on Hyperion. But these are full-priced discs, while the current Brilliant Classics box with the Zurich String Trio goes for a super bargain price. There should be more involved, however, than the matter of cost in guiding you to a decision. If I tell you why I favor the Leopold, you may find that the Zurich is more suited to your personal taste.

These trios are among Beethoven's earliest published works. 

Mozart's great E. Divertimento, K 563, was likely the young Beethoven's model. Whatever else one may say about them, evidence already exists in these very early trios, albeit in latent form, for the unique Beethoven persona that would soon emerge. Two examples will suffice.

The trio section of the first Menuetto in the E : Trio: a lovely melody is floated in the violin over an arpeggiated accompaniment in the viola and pizzicato in the cello. It is repeated, as expected. Then, where the melody reappears appended to the end of the second strain of the trio section, it is not exactly restated; instead, it is suggested by a series of gestures  in the violin part. But the ear hears outlined in those gestures the same melody, now made more poignant through the power of imagination. 

This technique will become a Beethoven hallmark, and it is one of the devices that accounts for the capacity of his music to affect us in such profound ways. It is the means by which the essence of an idea is communicated without explicitly expressing it, leaving us to imprint upon it our own meaning. To grasp the fuller implications of this, skip 30 years ahead to the alla danza movement of the op. 130 Quartet, and listen to how Beethoven implants his lilting little tune in your head, only later to have the first violin weave a filigree around it. You hear the tune spun through the decorative lace, even though it's not literally there.

In other ways, the Scherzo from the C-Minor Trio is also a portent of things to come. The restless urgency and sense of underlying menace that pervade the first movement already warn of the Sturm und Drang that lie ahead. Compare this movement, for example, to the first movement of the op. 18/4 String Quartet in the same key. But most of all, it's the shock of the Scherzo (no joke, this) with its whiplash cross rhythms and syncopations that not only convey a sense of dire danger, but rip asunder the comity and conviviality of 18th-century upper-class Viennese Hausmusik . Caught up in the revolutionary spirit of the 1790s, Beethoven was already on his own path to personal liberation, and indeed, music would never again be the same.

What all of this boils down to is, how do you want to hear these works? If you prefer to hear them, as I do, as harbingers of something new and quite bold, the Leopold Trio places a premium on those very elements that make this music so daring and dramatic. If you prefer a lower-voltage approach, one that de-emphasizes the shock and awe, and presents these trios more within the well-mannered context of Haydn's and Mozart's drawing-room music, the present readings with the Zurich String Trio are, I can honestly say, among the best of that particular class.

So, strongly recommended, if you like your early Beethoven decaffeinated. 

Credits : Arkiv Music 

Beethoven's Missa Solemnis -- A Grand Way To Start Off 2020

‘Is this the greatest piece ever written?’ Such was the question fired at me by Sir Roger Norrington during our correspondence in preparation for the recent performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, given by the combined choirs and orchestras of Cambridge University in King’s College Chapel, conducted by Sir Roger himself.

Norrington is an alumnus of Clare College, and perhaps the key figure in the development of historically informed musical performances during the 1970s – with extraordinary energy, imagination and a large dose of historical proof, he set about reimagining all sorts of music from Schütz to Wagner (and in recent years, even to Mahler) with the aim of playing that music, as far as possible, as it was played when it was written. That means – more often than not – smaller orchestras, fast tempi and, most notoriously, ‘pure tone’, or no vibrato, giving the sound an exciting edge and vitality in fast music, and a wonderful depth and profundity in slower music.

There’s plenty of both in the Missa Solemnis, and I spent a wonderful week assisting Sir Roger as he brought this music to life with Cambridge students. Assisting a conductor is an interesting task in itself – after leading the orchestra through an initial playthrough before Sir Roger joined us, I spent time in King’s evaluating balance issues between choir and orchestra, checking that the choir’s text was audible (never easy in a resonant acoustic like King’s) and occasionally suggesting where perhaps something might work better if played slightly differently. I have to confess, though, that the best part was getting to spend a week listening to the Missa Solemnis every night. I had spent a lot of the Christmas vacation learning the piece in order to prepare for my rehearsal with the orchestra, so I thought I knew it quite well – but I had barely scratched the surface, and (like so many works) the impact of a recording is trifling compared to that of a live performance, especially of this monumental work.

Beethoven considered the Missa Solemnis his greatest achievement. Cast in five monumental movements, it’s a real compendium of almost every musical texture – calm, pure diatonicism in the Kyrie, thunderous tutti sections and an almost operatic intensity at times in the Gloria, a mini-violin concerto in the Benedictus, war-like trumpets and drums in the Agnus Dei and, most remarkably, a seemingly never-ending sequence of massive fugues. Striking too are the frequent references to older styles of music, what Sir Roger referred to as the ‘old modes’ – a number of passages in the work, such as the Praeludium to the Benedictus, use the sound of older composers such as Palestrina and Bach, as well as frequent references to Handel’s Messiah. It may well be Beethoven’s masterpiece – but hardly anyone knows it. It’s pretty extraordinary when you think about it like that. His other great work with choir and orchestra, the Ninth Symphony, is performed hundreds of times every year and is a cornerstone of our musical culture, but somehow the Missa Solemnis has never reached such heights of popularity.

There are obvious reasons for this – it hasn’t got a tune to rival the Ode to Joy, and it’s ferociously difficult to perform. But there is also a more subtle reason, which I believe lies in a fundamental difference in the messages of the two works. The Ninth moves from a state of disorder and darkness at its opening to a glorious celebration of human brotherhood and hope, from chaos to certainty. The Missa Solemnis takes the opposite journey, from the stability of the unison cries of ‘Kyrie’ at the beginning to an oddly abrupt, almost unresolved ending.

The words that close the Mass, ‘dona nobis pacem’ (grant us peace) seem outwardly conciliatory, full of relaxed certainty in a peaceful future. Indeed, they are most often set like that, a major resolution of usually stormy, minor-key cries of ‘miserere nobis’ (have mercy upon us). Beethoven follows that harmonic path, but undercuts that with two sudden interjections of military trumpets and drums, the army banging at the gate. Sir Roger was keen to impress on us during rehearsals that Beethoven lived in Vienna during wartime – he knew the sound of warfare, and the frailty of peace. So the Agnus Dei presents an ambiguous ending – we seem to reach some kind of resolution with the last few orchestral chords, but the sound of warfare is still ringing in our ears. We have moved from a communal call in prayer to profound uncertainty about the future – the exact opposite of the Ninth.

So the Ninth is powerfully affirmatory, and looks to the future, whereas the Missa Solemnis is in the final reckoning ambivalent, unsettling and spends a lot of time looking to the past. It’s a no-brainer – but if you give yourself one musical project this year, make it to get to know the Missa Solemnis. It’s utterly extraordinary, and a list of my favourite passages could take up another two articles. There’s one, though, that’s too good not to share.

After the energy of the opening section of the Credo, we suddenly hit a wall – the music halves in speed, and we reach D minor for the words ‘Et incarnatus est’. The tenors of the choir intone the words in which Jesus was made man and dwelt among us to the accompaniment of violas and cellos; the same music is taken up by a few string players and the four soloists, while the flute, the Holy Spirit appearing as a dove, flutters serenely over the top of the texture. It’s an amazing moment, like so many in this work. But enough of me telling you about it – go and have a listen, live with it for a few weeks like I did, and become one of the few people who actually know Beethoven’s greatest achievement.

Credits : William Cole 

Beethoven's Mass In C Major -- Heaven On Earth

The C Major Mass was commissioned by Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy (II) to commemorate the name day of his wife, Marie von Liechtenstein. Beethoven’s motivation for writing it, then, was less related to his own religious feeling. Because of this, the style of this mass was similar to that of Haydn’s masses. In fact, this commission was an annual Esterhazy custom fulfilled on six prior occasions by Haydn. The Mass in C, therefore, is not highly creative and is written in a static form. Even some melodies have been more suggestive of Mozart or Gluck than Beethoven.

Nevertheless, Beethoven put enough of his own style into his C Major Mass that he occasionally deviated from conformity to strict conventions. After the first performance of the Mass, the Prince reportedly said, "My dear Beethoven, what have you written there!", evidently in a condescending tone. Beethoven immediately became irritated by this, and he left the Prince’s court on the same day of the performance. The score was then dedicated to Prince Ferdinand Kinsky instead.

Like the Missa Solemnis, the C Major Mass was divided into five movements, and it utilized SATB soloists, a SATB chorus, and a full orchestra.

In the Kyrie, Beethoven uses a sonata form. The first Kyrie is in tonic C major, and its theme is the exposition. The Christe changes to the mediant E and functions and the development. The final Kyrie reverts to tonic FC and recapitulates the theme of the first Kyrie.

In the Gloria, two Allegro sections surround a slower section in a different key. This movement ends fugally with "Cum sancto spiritu in Gloria Dei patris, amen.", which is the customary ending of the Gloria. One can contrast this ending with the Missa Solemnis, where shouts of "Gloria!" instead of "Amen" conclude the section.

The Credo consists of three sections, the Allegro con brio, the Adagio, and the Allegro ma non troppo. This movement also ends with a fast and lively fugue, which follows the same pattern followed by Haydn.

In the Sanctus and Benedictus, each unit ends with "Osanna in excelsis!", which utilizes the same fugato. Like the Missa Solemnis, the Sanctus and Benedictus are treated somewhat independently, though they are included within the same movement.

The Agnus Dei perhaps illustrates the biggest difference between the Missa Solemnis and the C Major Mass. In the C Major Mass, Beethoven does use the three conventional calls to the Lamb of God, the first two ending with "miserere nobis" and the last ending with "dona nobis pacem". Supposedly, it was the custom in the Viennese Mass for the first sections to be in a minor key and for the last to end in the tonic major with a brighter tempo. Beethoven follows this convention in his C Major Mass, but as previously discussed, completely changed the format of the text and the music in his Missa Solemnis.

Beethoven unifies the C Major Mass by using the same music at the beginning of the Kyrie and the ending of the Agnus Dei. Even the orchestration is the same; only the words in the texts differ.

With all of the similarities between Beethoven’s and Haydn’s masses, it is obvious that Beethoven’s C Major Mass was supposed to be in the traditional style of the mass. On the other hand, the Missa Solemnis was written as much for himself as for anyone else, so he integrated his soul into the heart of the Missa Solemnis, giving it a religious signficance far deeper than that of the C Major Mass.

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Beethoven The Complete Piano Trios By Trio Elegiaque -- AN INDEPTH REVIEW

Here, for all piano trio aficionados, is the complete-complete oeuvre of Beethoven in that genre. This set includes not only all the opus-numbered trios, not only the “Kakadu” Variations and Variations on an Original Theme, op. 44, but also both trios without opus numbers (including the obscure Allegretto, Hess 48) and trio reductions of other works: the Second Symphony, the famous Septet, and the String Quintet, op. 4. In short, if you like Beethoven in a piano trio mode, this set is heaven for you.


Moreover, Brilliant Classics has really lucked out with Trio Élégiaque. Its members are all laureates of major international competitions: violinist Laurent Le Flécheur, pianist François Dumont, and cellist Virginie Constant. The liner notes tell us that they had “several meetings with members of the Beaux Arts Trio, Amadeus, and Alban Berg Quartets” which helped them formulate their style of playing chamber music. 

The result is a group very much like Beaux Arts, certainly a lot like the original Beaux Arts when they had the sweet-toned, elegant violinist Daniel Guilet heading the group. Trio Élégiaque practically oozes French elegance and charm, particularly violinist Le Flécher, whose tone and technique reminded me not only of Guilet but also of Jacques Thibaud, and pianist Dumont, whose light but rhythmically propulsive playing recalls any number of outstanding French pianists. These qualities find their way not only into the mature works, but also into the early ones. 

The op. 1/2 Trio that opens disc one is a perfect case in point: Their mellifluous reading of the opening Adagio practically floats on a cloud. At first, I heard this as a possible danger point for the set—I hoped they would not stay light and airy even when the music turned more dramatic—but I shouldn’t have worried. Though this trio will not erase memories of Thibaud-Cortot-Casals, they share with that legendary group a penchant for bringing more out of the music that is apparent in the printed page. True, their style leans more towards coaxing sounds out of their instruments rather than the kind of deep drama that Cortot and especially Casals were capable of, but it’s not at all bland playing. On the contrary, one stays mentally tuned in to them because their playing is so subtle—until they pull out the stops, as in the Finale of the op. 1/2, where they take off like birds riding a jet stream.


And just listen to the way they tear into the opening movement of the “Ghost” Trio! Even Yehudi Menuhin, playing with his sister Hepzibah and cellist Maurice Eisenberg, didn’t take it at this blistering a speed. Yet Trio Élégiaque loses nothing in terms of elegance, instrumental control, or dynamics; on the contrary, it’s all there, just spun out at a pace that takes your breath away—as it should. Nor does this Trio slough off the early trios: Listen to the way they manage to bring out Beethoven’s peculiarly galumphing humor in the E? Trio WoO 38.


I was particularly fascinated by Dumont’s style. Unlike many Beethoven pianists, his playing isn’t “dynamic” in the sense that the music explodes from his fingers. Rather, he produces an excellent legato by means of connected, pearl-like notes that almost emerge from the keyboard as if they were played on the vibes. At times, he creates an almost shimmering sound; at others, a crisp, clean articulation that accents no particular notes in his scale-runs yet somehow manages to make the entire scale-run sound dynamic via subtle crescendos that encompass the whole of each passage.


I’m not a fan of transcriptions, even when the composer himself does them, unless they have some interesting features about them (new textures, different balances, etc.). Consequently, I can’t say that I looked forward to hearing these trio transcriptions of the Symphony No. 2, String Quintet, op. 4, or the Septet. 

The Trio plays them very well, with verve and charm, but not with enough of the peasant humor Beethoven put into the first and third of them. (I might add that neither this transcription nor the original String Quintet is particularly interesting as music.) Thus I found them to be good but not revelatory. Also, after nearly a century of recordings, it’s hard to find anything new (or revelatory) to say with the “Archduke” Trio. This performance focuses on the music’s refinement of ideas, something new for Beethoven at this particular time, and thus comes across as a good reading without exactly stealing one’s breath away.


I did, however, find myself caught up in their brilliant performance of the op. 11 Trio, titled “Gassenhauer,” and it was indeed a gasser! They also have fun with the variations on I am the tailor Kakadu . As for the trio arrangement of the Septet, I’m sorry, but it’s just too empty-sounding. Not enough “voices,” and I don’t want to hear the Scherzo there played on a cello. I want to hear a horn.


All in all, however, this is a remarkably good set. Don’t mind my quibbles; they may not be yours. Where it really matters, in the early and little-known pieces, Trio Élégiaque is simply splendid. 

Credits : Arkiv Music 
  

Beethoven's Profound Piano Quartets

The Three Piano Quartets were written when the Composer was only 15 years old.

They are among the most profound of Beethoven's Earliest Compositions.

When Beethoven was very young, He was musically influenced mostly by Christian Neefe a Composer and one of Beethoven's First Music Teachers. He was also highly influenced by Franz Sterkel -- One Of the Best Pianists in Europe at that time as well as by Mozart.

Of all influences on the Young Beethoven, Neefe's was immediate and Mozart's extremely profound.

The First of Beethoven's Quartets is based on Mozart's K- 379/373a, the Second on K 380/374f and the Third on K - 296. All 3 Piano Quartets are in 3 Movements.

The E Flat Major Quartet is unique in that its slow first movement jumps without waiting into an Allegro Con Spirito in E Flat Minor.

The E Flat Minor Movement in Sonata Form features an extremely small development but has some adventurous passages in its recapitulation. The Final Movement is a set of 6 Variations in an ornamental style on a High Classical Era Theme with 2 Eight Measure Segments.

Each of the Segments is repeated, the First Moving to the Dominant and the Second returning to the Tonic. Beethoven follows this pattern in all of the variations the fifth of which is in E Flat Minor.

After the Awesome Variations have been done with the theme returns only slightly differently followed by a movement of the first variation.

It should be remembered right here that The Piano dominates the Musical Scene Completely.

Beethoven Set the D Major Quartet in a more traditional way, with a slow central movement encompassed by two fast ones.

The Opening Allegro is in Sonata Form and is modulated to the dominant Key. Boasting a much larger development section than that of the E Flat Quartet, the movement touches on D Minor before it recapitulates again.

The Second Movement in F Sharp Minor is in two parts and is aptly named Andante Con Moto.

The Piano opens the concluding Rondo with a movement of Youthful Energy dominated by the Keys.

Finally, We come to the Third and Final Piano Quartet. What Does Beethoven have in store for us here ??

The Quartet in C Major has 3 Movements, the second of which is in a laid back F Major.

After a Brief Development Section, Beethoven commences the recapitulation on the subdominant -- a procedure Schubert would make use of in several of his Piano Works.

The Second Movement features some of the most melodic passages of Beethoven's Youthful Days though his tendency to double most of these robs them of some of their delicate nature.

Nearly, all of the Thematic Material in the closing Rondo is concentrated in the Piano Part.

The Art of Playing And Understanding Beethoven's Razumovsky String Quartets

They are not easy listening and even harder to play.

Beethoven's three "Razumovsky" string quartets left both their first performers and the public shocked and suspicious. The violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, whose quartet premiered the Opus 59 works, complained they were unreasonably difficult. After playing the opening solo from the second movement of the first of the three quartets, cellist Bernhard Romberg threw his music to the ground and stamped on it.

What sort of sorry substitute for a tune was this? How insulting to give a cellist of his stature such a banal rhythm, the sort of thing anyone could tap out with a pencil!

Meanwhile, the violinist Felix Radicati is said to have complained these were "not music".

"They are not for you, but for a later age," Beethoven told his critics.

Commissioned in 1802 by Count Razumovsky to write three new quartets, Beethoven surprised his Russian patron by presenting him with lengthy compositions that express intense, shifting emotions. Imagine the scene: the guests at Count Razumovsky's new Viennese palace, after a sumptuous meal, pause on the terrace to look down over the Danube and spires of Vienna; they adjourn to an elaborate concert hall to listen to these brand new works. But the opening music of Opus 59 No 2 is hardly an aid to digestion: two loud chords followed by a bar's silence.

A few bars of breathless, mysterious music and another silence. It was like nothing they had heard before. The complicated rhythms and dialogue between the different parts must have perplexed anyone encountering them for the first time. Schuppanzigh had good reason to feel worried about the music – exposed runs and leaps that cover the whole range of the violin with alarming velocity.

But it was not only the technical demands that disturbed these early interpreters. They suspected that the music was inappropriate – that it did not behave as classical chamber music should. The movement that so offended Romberg is marked sempre scherzando – "always jokingly". With its unpredictable changes of emotion and texture, the musicians probably felt that the joke was at their expense.

A sweet melody has only just got going when it peters out to be replaced by an aggressive rhythm. Very loud passages end abruptly and are superseded by cheeky, quiet music that seems to bear no relation to the previous music. The last bars of the movement feature wrong-sounding notes righted only by emphatic final chords.

The closest thing to a favourable review of Beethoven's new quartets was published in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung on 27 February 1807:

"Three new, very long and difficult Beethoven string quartets … are attracting the attention of all connoisseurs. The conception is profound and the construction excellent, but they are not easily comprehended."

Although the Razumovsky Quartets are today among Beethoven's most popular works, it's worth reminding ourselves of those first reactions – which can inform our own approach to this radical music.

The Takács Quartet begins a year-long traversal of the complete Beethoven cycle over six concerts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. Playing the works is a thrilling and daunting experience. We feel like tennis players forced out of position, obliged to draw on our physical and mental resources to raise our game. We have rehearsed this music for many years, but performing a Beethoven quartet still inspires an exhilarating sense of danger.

There's a short passage during the last movement of Opus 59 No 2 that raises our blood pressure however many times we perform it. We throw a three-note figure from one instrument to the next as if engaged in a frantic relay race. No sooner has a player grabbed the baton than it must be passed on to the next, who gives it on to the next, now back to the first, and so on, to create a musical line that whirls us back to the opening tune.

If someone misses an entrance, the resulting hole is as comical as the culprit's desperate attempt to recover. A late entrance results in collision with the following player – who drops the baton altogether while the others wait in confusion, wondering what to do next. In rehearsal such an accident is amusing, in a concert less so.

Playing the passage is easier if we approach it like a technical study, concentrating merely on entering at the right time. But to bring out its mischievous character requires an element of risk. Although we know this passage so well that it whirls around in our heads during sleepless nights, on stage it should sound spontaneous. We vary slightly the dynamics and timing each night – spontaneity helps maintain the illusion that the music is being created for the first time.

The thrill of Beethoven's quartets comes in part from the combination of virtuosic difficulty and emotional intensity. In the second Opus 59 quartet's first movement, sudden changes of dynamics, unexplained silences and breathless digressions draw us into a drama where emotions are barely under control.

It would certainly be easier to manage the music if we could play in a detached manner, keeping our muscles loose and remembering to breathe deeply. Frequent breaks to towel down, eat a banana and do some yoga stretches would be handy in performance as well as rehearsal. Yet the turbulent character of this music is impossible to achieve if the performers appear to be holding back. In rehearsal we often alternate approaches, playing first slowly and comfortably, then with maximum commitment, trusting that our joints will remember to stay supple as we become more emotionally engaged.

Communicating sudden and extreme shifts of emotion in Beethoven's quartets requires a combination of abandon and control. Beethoven follows the whirlwind ending to this first movement with an Adagio molto, apparently composed after contemplating the stars at night.

Celestial serenity brings solace after the turbulence of the first movement, but this shift from one mood to another is a challenge. As we play the first quiet notes with smooth and slow bows, our hearts are still racing from the previous movement. I try to communicate an atmosphere of peaceful wonder aided by a large bead of sweat that tickles its way down my nose before splashing on to the top of my violin.

Our rehearsals give us time to explore different musical possibilities and return to familiar passages to question our interpretation. How best to create the maximum shock with those chords at the beginning of Opus 59 No 2?

Our cellist András worries that we are using too much bow and should focus more on a crisp initial attack. We send him out into the hall to gauge how distance affects the impact. He confirms that the violin sound is too shallow and needs more bite. Geri, our violist, reminds us to freeze in the following silence – the suspense will be lessened if I fidget on my chair.

At the beginning of the slow movement Károly suggests that I play with a less rich sound. When he joins in with the second violin part we will be able to make a purer sound together – more like a church choir. Encouraging each other to try different approaches helps us to stay true to the searching spirit in the music.

Although Beethoven would no doubt be happy that his quartet cycle is now celebrated as mainstream chamber music repertoire, he might have derived his greatest satisfaction from the music's continuing ability to surprise and challenge. He never wanted his performers and audience ever to become too comfortable. The experience of the first players and listeners can still inspire us.

Credits : The Takacs Take on Beethoven's Razumovsky String Quartets
               By Edward Dusinberre
               November 5, 2009
               The Guardian
               United Kingdom 

A Stupendous Task Regarding Beethoven's Complete Piano Sonatas

Andras Schiff has just come to the end of a project to record all of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas for the ECM label, a project he put off for years until he felt he was ready.

"For me, these sonatas are the most stupendous journey. They give a complete picture of how Beethoven developed though his creative life."

Preparing these pieces meant first of all paying close attention to the text. Schiff found this could sometimes yield surprises. "Take the famous Moonlight Sonata," he says.

"Beethoven marks it 'senza sordino' [without mutes] throughout, and in piano music that means 'without dampers'. That blurs all the harmonies together, which at that date was a very bold thing to do, and most pianists shy away from it." But not this one.

Another example comes in Beethoven's most titanic piano sonata, the famous Hammerklavier.

"Many people say that the metronome mark of the opening movement is simply impossible, and there are quite a few other pianists, even great ones, who make it seem very heavy and turgid. But it's not impossible, it's just difficult."

But what about that famous leap for the left hand at the beginning, which strikes terror into every pianist?

"Well, yes, it's really dangerous at that speed, but that's how it's supposed to be. You know, I would rather cut my hand off than divide that leap between the two hands, the way some pianists do."

This "close reading" of Beethoven underlies several striking moments that you might think are simply Schiff's personal take on the music. There's a moment in his recording of the Hammerklavier where he makes an enormous pause on a particular chord.

"Yes, I know the chord you mean. That's an example of how analysing the way a piece works helps you to make it more expressive. That chord is so remote from the main key, and I wanted to emphasise that sense of being at the furthest point from home."

But not everything Schiff finds in these great pieces is so abstract. Humour is there, too. "You know that G major sonata, the one where the hands are misaligned?" he asks. "To me, it's like a parody of those pianists who can't or won't play with the hands together.

"The slow movement of that sonata is humorous, too. It's full of exaggerated operatic pathos, with this florid melody over a simple bass. If you take it seriously, it's absurd. I think Alfred Brendel was right when he described it as a parody of Italian opera.

"One thing we know about Beethoven is that he was really annoyed that Rossini's music was so much more popular in Vienna than his, and this sonata is a kind of revenge."

At the opposite pole are the moments of stillness, where Beethoven seems to be peering into the infinite. "I love these moments, which often sit right next to a bit of rough humour. This is what gives Beethoven his Shakespearian breadth.

"In his late sonatas, Beethoven creates aural symbols of the transcendent, in a way no other composer had before him. Take the very last piano sonata he wrote. The first movement is heavy and earth-bound; the second lifts up to heaven. The sound has no bass, it seems to float at a great height, and time is suspended."

Finally, Schiff is starting to get animated. As he talks, he makes arabesques with his hands, as if moulding an imagined musical phrase. What fires this man is the never-ending process of getting closer to a great work, a process that involves so much more than mere accuracy.

"You know, as a performer you have duties and you have liberties," he says.

"And one of the liberties is highlighting those moments where the music is at a crossroads. You can help the listener to be aware that the music has an inner freedom, so it could have gone another way at that point.

"The final instalment of Andras Schiff's complete Beethoven sonata cycle was released on the ECM label on Oct 29, 2007. He appeared with bass Robert Holl at the Wigmore Hall on Nov 13, 2007.

Credits : How Andras Schiff Completed All Beethoven's Sonatas
              By Ivan Hewett
              23 October 2008, The Telegraph
              United Kingdom 

Anne Sophie Mutter and Beethoven's Absorbing String Trios

It seems that in regard to string trios, three’s a crowd, with little appeal for composers who since the Baroque era have preferred to write for string quartets or other chamber formations.

The catalog for musical threesomes is relatively small: Boccherini wrote a dozen pieces for violin, viola and cello, and Mozart contributed a significant work. In the 20th century, composers, including Webern, Xenakis and Schoenberg, added to the genre. Beethoven wrote five string trios early in his career, three of which were performed on Sunday afternoon at Avery Fisher Hall by the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, the cellist Lynn Harrell and the violist Yuri Bashmet.

The focal point in this celebrity trio was certainly Ms. Mutter, artist in residence at the New York Philharmonic this season. The three musicians have different performing styles and here Mr. Bashmet and Mr. Harrell seemed content to play second fiddle to Ms. Mutter’s more dominant personality.

Beethoven’s string trios, now infrequently performed, were all written before 1798; when he began composing string quartets shortly afterward, he never revisited the string-trio genre.

The afternoon concluded with the earliest work on the program, the String Trio in E flat (Op. 3), Beethoven’s first effort in the genre, written before 1794. This sunny work echoes Mozart in sound and structure (if not in substance), with the same six-movement layout as Mozart’s Divertimento for String Trio (K. 563).

Here and in the two works before intermission, Ms. Mutter was the more aggressive player, her powerful sound a contrast to Mr. Bashmet’s warm, buttery tone (too infrequently heard throughout the concert) and Mr. Harrell’s more lyrical approach.

The program opened with a fast-paced rendition of the String Trio in C minor (Op. 9, No. 3), a key that Beethoven frequently used and that is often associated with his stormy artistic character. The opening movement hints at the turbulence to come in some of his string quartets.

Credits : The New York Times
               November 15, 2010 

Getting To The Heart of Beethoven

The Budapest String Quartet has always been my standard-bearer for chamber music. I grew up listening to their recordings, and specially admired not only their gorgeous sound, but also the uncanny interaction among all four players, even when there were changes in personnel. They had a way of playing as if they were speaking to each other, expressing deep and sometimes complicated feelings.

One of my most memorable concert experiences was the only time I ever heard the Budapest in person, when I was 20. The concert was sold out, but the management decided to sell seats on the stage. It was like being in a room and overhearing an enthralling conversation only a few feet away.

I learned the Beethoven quartets under two remarkable circumstances. I took an amazing course on the quartets in college, directed by the great violinist and historian Boris Schwarz (no relation). Instead of playing recordings, he assembled a string quartet from the faculty with himself on first violin.

Each musical illustration was presented by the live musicians, and after each lecture, the group would play the entire quartet. One summer, my undergraduate mentor invited me to house-sit at her Greenwich Village studio while she was on vacation. I wouldn't have to pay rent if I promised to listen to her recordings of the Budapest Quartet playing Beethoven.

The Beethoven quartets are, maybe along with his 32 piano sonatas, a kind of lifelong spiritual autobiography. Like Shakespeare, Beethoven starts out by showing his influences while he is already striking out on his own, keeping well within the old 18th-century formal boundaries but leaving behind the sublime nuances of Mozart and the refined wit of Haydn for a new Romantic energy.

When he returns to quartet writing in the middle of his career, his ambitions are more vast. He expands the very nature of the string quartet.

The works are denser and grander yet more personal, like Shakespeare's dark comedies. Near the end of his career, Beethoven completes five more quartets, and these so-called "late quartets" rank among the most extraordinary compositions in all of music — longer than any previous string quartet, infinitely more complex in form as well as in content.

The quartet No. 15 in A-minor became the model for T.S. Eliot's great poetic meditation on time, the Four Quartets. One of the quartets is in seven movements, instead of the usual four. One movement — a Great Fugue — is so convoluted and intense, it's on the edge of atonality, and it's so long that Beethoven ended up making it a separate, independent Opus.

There are three complete recorded cycles of the 16 Beethoven string quartets by the Budapest Quartet. My touchstone is still the set they made for Columbia in the early 1950s, playing the magnificent instruments owned by the Library of Congress. This complete series has never been issued on CD in this country. There's also a remarkable series on the Bridge label: live concerts at the Library of Congress between 1940 and 1962.

And now, more than 50 years after its original LP release, Sony has finally issued a CD of the studio recordings the Budapest Quartet made in the late '50s and early '60s, in stereo. Some of these performances are less subtle and less purely beautiful than the earlier set, but they have their own large dimension of drama and power and heart, and are equally indispensable.

Credits : Budapest Quartet Gets To The Heart Of Beethoven
              By Lloyd Schwartz
              October 16, 2012 

Beethoven's Amazing Piano Trios

An intuitive collaboration between Alexander Melnikov, Isabelle Faust and Jean-Guihen Queyras brings sensitivity and lyricism to Beethoven's Piano Trios. 

 

Put three such stylistically perceptive young musicians as Alexander Melnikov, Isabelle Faust and Jean-Guihen Queyras together and you can anticipate a result no less than stimulating. True to expectations, their playing, their sensitivity and the way they interact with each other lend their performances of Beethoven's final two piano trios both vitality and stature.

The slow introductory phrases of the E flat Trio Op 70 No 2 immediately define the ensemble's interpretative stance: the violin and the cello are virtually vibrato-less, and the keyboard is a fortepiano. In fact, it is a restored Viennese fortepiano of about 1828, somewhat later than either of these trios but not to the extent of being disturbingly anachronistic.

The instrument, which comes from Melnikov's own collection, has a lovely mellow, ample timbre with a pearly glow on which he capitalises in playing of refined shaping and clarity. Faust (on a 1704 Stradivarius) and Queyras (on a 1696 Giofredo Cappa) do not forsake vibrato altogether as the E flat Trio progresses, but they use it sparingly for expressive effect, in a manner that could well have been the norm in Beethoven's own day.

Equally, those phrases that they play with no vibrato at all take on an eerie, withdrawn quality that arrests the ear, not in a negative self-conscious way but as a reasoned, plausible component of a dramatic colour scheme. There is certainly no shortage of energy or conviction in their propounding of the musical arguments in the first movement or the scurrying, excitingly accented finale.

The judiciously applied palette of weight, touch and tonal variety that so animates the E flat Trio is similarly in evidence in the great "Archduke".

Here Melnikov, Faust and Queyras give the music proper space to breathe in the broad first movement while keeping a firm hand on the structural reins.

The playing throughout the trio is thoroughly attuned to the tone and emotional scope of the music, profoundly rapt in the andante and perkily whimsical, explosive and propulsive in the gloriously idiosyncratic finale.

Credits : Beethoven's Piano Trios -- A Review
               By Geoffrey Norris
               20 February, 2014
               The Telegraph, United Kingdom 

An Awesome Spin on Beethoven -- The Late String Quartets

For any string quartet, performances of the late Beethoven quartets represents the summit of their craft, a challenge to stretch their intellectual and musical powers to their limits. Just as Beethoven's symphonies redefined the form and set its development on an utterly new track that continued right through the 19th century, so his string quartets, and the series of late works that began with the E flat Quartet, Op 127, in particular, set a new standard for the musical significance of the medium - and put in train a line of development which is carried on even today in the quartets of Elliott Carter and Brian Ferneyhough.

Those five quartets - six if you regard the Grosse Fuge, originally intended as the finale of the B flat, Op 130, as an independent work - come with a huge amount of musical and historical baggage, therefore, all of which just increases the weight of expectation placed upon any interpretation. The performing tradition of these works, first in the concert hall and in the second half of the 20th century on disc too, is probably more sanctified than that of any other repertoire: record collectors may talk with reverence about Furtwängler's recording of Tristan, Toscanini's Falstaff or Klemperer's Eroica Symphony, but a special awe is reserved for discussions of the Busch Quartet's late Beethoven, or even the recordings of a generation later by the Budapest and Hungarian Quartets.

Though most of those performances are more than half a century old now, they remain the standards against which any new set of these works is bound to be judged, and it is saying a great deal about the sheer understanding and accomplishment of these recordings by the Takács Quartet that they are the first to arrive for a long time to deserve such comparisons. Alongside these interpretations most other contemporary accounts are simply nowhere; the Takács make the competition seem either slick and meretricious, or insecure and over-emphatic.

These are performances that have quite clearly been maturing for a long time, so that every detail (one or two of them unexpected - the Takács play from a new edition of the works) is placed in its natural context, the phrasing, using just a trace of a slide between some notes, is utterly organic and the ensemble at times almost subliminally precise.

There are one or two trifling complaints to be made about the set, however. It is very well-filled - the F minor Quartet Op 95 is included as well as the genuinely late works (presumably because no room could be found for it in the two previous instalments of the Takács cycle, which covered the Op 18 works, and the Rasumovskys and Op 74 respectively) and both of Beethoven's finales for Op 130 are there, with the Grosse Fuge placed on the disc before its replacement. But accommodating that amount of music on just three discs means that the order of the works is not chronological - the first disc contains the E flat Op 127 and the C sharp minor Op 131, the second the A minor Op 132, and the very last in F major Op 135, with Op 130 prefaced by Op 95 on the last.

Anyone who wants to hear just a single work won't be bothered by such an arrangement, but those who would like to follow the extraordinary evolution of Beethoven's formal thinking in these late works - from the classical four movements of Op 127, through the proliferation of movements in 130, 131 and 132, with a return to the classical plan in Op 135 will have a bit of disc swapping and track-finding to do.

With performances as superb as these, though, it is a minor inconvenience. There are so many things to treasure in every work, details that it is hard to imagine better done, whether it's the perfectly controlled sense of release in the first movement of Op 127, the utterly certain progress of the fugue that opens 131 and the bewitchingly deft account of the little Presto later in the same work, the gradually increasing radiance of the thanksgiving hymn in 132, or the way in which the infinitely touching account of the Cavatina in 130, never sentimental and followed by the Grosse Fuge which never even momentarily sounds under strain.

This is an exceptional achievement. For anyone who does not possess versions of these works it is now the obvious recommendation (the sound is wonderfully lifelike and unobtrusively detailed too), and even those who remain passionate about the performances by the Busch Quartet or some other iconic recordings will find them fascinating and satisfying.

Credits : Beethoven -- The Late String Quartets
               By Andrew Clements -- The Guardian
               2005 

A Famous Conductor - Pianist On Beethoven

It is always interesting and sometimes even important to have intimate knowledge of a composer’s life, but it is not essential in order to understand the composer’s works.

In Beethoven’s case, one mustn’t forget that in 1802, the year he was contemplating suicide – as he wrote in an unsent letter to his brothers that came to be known as the “Heiligenstadt Testament” – he also composed the Second Symphony, one of his works that was most positive in spirit, thus showing us that it is of vital importance to separate his music from his personal biography and not to conflate the two.

Therefore, I will not aim here to provide an elaborate psychological study of the man Beethoven through an analysis of his works, or vice versa. It must be understood that one cannot explain the nature or the message of music through words. Music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments of his life. It might be poetic, philosophical, or mathematical, but in any case it must, in my view, have something to do with the soul of the human being. Hence it is metaphysical; but the means of expression is purely and exclusively physical: sound.

I believe it is precisely this permanent coexistence of metaphysical message through physical means that is the strength of music. It is also the reason why when we try to describe music with words, all we can do is articulate our reactions to it, and not grasp music itself.

Beethoven’s importance in music has been principally defined by the revolutionary nature of his compositions. He freed music from hitherto prevailing conventions of harmony and structure. Sometimes I feel in his late works a will to break all signs of continuity.

The music is abrupt and seemingly disconnected, as in the last piano sonata (Op 111). In musical expression, he did not feel restrained by the weight of convention. By all accounts he was a freethinking person, and a courageous one, and I find courage an essential quality for the understanding, let alone the performance, of his works.

This courageous attitude in fact becomes a requirement for the performers of Beethoven’s music. His compositions demand the performer to show courage, for example in the use of dynamics.

Beethoven’s habit of increasing the volume with an intense crescendo and then abruptly following it with a sudden soft passage (a “subito piano”) was only rarely used by composers before him. In other words, Beethoven asks the performer to show courage, not to be afraid of going to the edge of the precipice, and he thus forces the performer to find the “line of most resistance”, a phrase coined by the great pianist Artur Schnabel.

Beethoven was a deeply political man in the broadest sense of the word. He was not interested in daily politics, but concerned with questions of moral behaviour and the larger questions of right and wrong affecting the entire society. Especially significant was his view of freedom, which, for him, was associated with the rights and responsibilities of the individual: he advocated freedom of thought and of personal expression.

Beethoven’s music is too often seen as exclusively dramatic, expressive of titanic struggle. In this respect, the Eroica and the Fifth symphonies represent only one side of his work; one must also appreciate, for example, his Pastoral Symphony. His music is both introverted and extroverted and it again and again juxtaposes these qualities. The one human trait that is not present in his music is superficiality. Nor can it be characterised as shy or cute. On the contrary, even when it is intimate, as in the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Pastoral Symphony, it has an element of grandeur. And when it is grand, it also remains intensely personal, the obvious example being the Ninth Symphony.

Beethoven, in my view, was able to achieve a perfect balance in his music between vertical pressure – pressure from the composer’s mastery of musical form – and horizontal flow: he always combines vertical factors such as harmony, pitch, accents or tempo, all of which relate to a sense of rigour, with a great sense of freedom and fluidity. This question of extremes and of balance, I believe, must have been a conscious preoccupation for him.

You find an expression of it in Fidelio, for example: the composition contains a constant movement between polar opposites – from light to darkness, the negative to the positive, between events that occur above, on the surface, and those that take place underground. Just as he was unable to write anything superficial, or simply pretty, he was equally unable or unwilling to write anything portraying what was fundamentally and exclusively evil.

Even a character such as Pizarro, the governor of the prison in Fidelio, can be understood as a personification of corruption and oppression, but not of evil.

Beethoven’s music tends to move from chaos to order (as with the introduction to the Fourth Symphony) as if order were an imperative of human existence. For him, order does not result from forgetting or ignoring the disorders that plague our existence; order is a necessary development, an improvement that may lead to the Greek ideal of catharsis.

It is not by chance that the Funeral March is not the last movement of the Eroica Symphony, but the second, so that suffering does not have the last word. One could paraphrase much of the work of Beethoven by saying that suffering is inevitable, but the courage to fight it renders life worth living.

Credits : Daniel Barenboim On The Beauty of Beethoven
               16 December 2015
                The Telegraph United Kingdom 

 

Beethoven's Triple Concerto A Treat for Classical Music Lovers

Beethoven Triple Concerto: arguably the least successful of any of Beethoven's mature concertos in the concert hall. It's one of those pieces that never seems to get a performance that does it justice.

Usually, you get terrible seriousness when a big orchestra and three star names try to out-do each other, as the cello, violin, and piano soloists fight for the limelight.

On disc, it hasn't fared much better, and there's an infamous Herbert von Karajan recording from 1969 with David Oistrakh on violin, Sviatoslav Richter on piano, and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich: it's a nadir of gigantic egos trying to trump each other, a bonfire of the vanities from which Karajan and the Berlin Philarmonic still somehow manage to emerge victorious.

So praise be to the Avison Ensemble at Kings Place, and a performance that made the Triple Concerto come alive as a concert experience. There was the thrill of seeing a period instrument band take up every inch of the stage in Kings Place's Hall 1 (even if the string section was reduced to a handful of violins and violas, just 3 cellos and a couple of double of basses), and hearing them fill the hall's fantastic acoustic.

The truth is that the Triple Concerto isn't a concerto at all, since there's no real dialogue between the orchestra and the soloists, and the three soloists carry virtually all of the musical argument themselves. The Avison Ensemble's performance revealed the piece for what it really is: an amplified piano trio, with the orchestra beefing up the textures but often reduced to no more than generic accompaniment. Best of all in the Avison's performance was its sheer sense of fun.

The Avisons playing was far from perfect in its balance and technique, but it was exciting, physical, and improvisational. In the Triple Concerto, I'd take them over Karajan and the Russians any day.

Credits : Beethoven's Triple Concerto By Tom Service
              27 March 2009
              The Guardian, United Kingdom 

Beethoven's Piano Concertos -- In Heaven Already

At 38 Paul Lewis is a major pianist, and his new recordings of the five Beethoven piano concertos, with Jiri Belohlavek conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Harmonia Mundi HMC 902053.55; three CDs), are exceptionally fine. These are freshly considered, elegant and engrossing performances.

Though Mr. Lewis has an extensive repertory, Beethoven has been central to his activities of late. 

Starting in 2005 he performed the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas in a series of recitals in Europe and America. His widely acclaimed recordings of the sonatas for Harmonia Mundi, first issued in installments, are now available as a 10-CD boxed set. Even among the eminent competition, including several historic surveys, Mr. Lewis’s recordings are richly satisfying. The same holds for the new concerto set.

 The first movement of the Concerto No. 1 in C suggests what is to come. The tempo, though lively, is not especially fast. The exuberance stems from the mix of urgency and relaxation that Mr. Belohlavek draws from the orchestra. 

The phrases of the theme are laid out with clarity and purpose, like the sentences of a compelling conversationalist. When the piano makes its first entrance, Mr. Lewis is similarly lucid and immediate. His playing is by turns delicate, incisive, mysterious, punchy: whatever seems called for.

 In each concerto Mr. Lewis is specially good at fleshing out the character of the music. There is no padding, no mere passage work in these performances. Every phrase speaks; every note counts. The tempos of the jaunty Concerto No. 2 in B flat are restrained in comparison with those in many of typical performances. Yet by revealing the refinement of the music so sensitively, Mr. Lewis makes this work seem less beholden to existing Classical models, more a precursor to the mystical experiments that were to come, specially in the Fourth Concerto.

He also has plenty of firepower in the break-out moments of the “Emperor” Concerto, like the pummeling double octaves in the vehement development section of the first movement. Still, what distinguishes the performance is Mr. Lewis’s deft blend of magisterial vigor and impetuosity. Mr. Belohlavek and the BBC players are his co-conspirators in this bracing “Emperor.” Fourth Concerto.

Credits :  Mixing Urgency and Relaxation 

                By ANTHONY TOMMASINI 

                SEPT. 24, 2010

                The New York Times  

The Amazing Story Behind Beethoven's Cello Sonatas

Performing Beethoven's entire oeuvre for cello and piano in sequence is a very different experience from playing any of the works separately; it is a journey through a life. One wonderful aspect of the sonatas is that they represent all of Beethoven's three major creative periods. The first two, in F major and G minor, Op 5, were written at a time when the composer was carving out a career for himself as a virtuoso pianist; in those days, of course, most performers composed.

Beethoven performed these pieces with the famous French cellist Jean-Pierre Duport in Berlin, at the court of King Friedrich II of Prussia (an amateur cellist himself, for whom Haydn and Mozart had written quartets). This was in 1796, when Beethoven was just 25 years old, not yet suffering from the deafness that would transform his whole existence.

The two sonatas are real concert pieces, large in scale, full of exciting effects that would have left the Berliners gasping. They are really sonatas for piano with cello, not the other way round; although there are unexpected flights to high registers for the cello (as there are in all three sets of variations for cello and piano that Beethoven wrote between 1796 and 1801), there is no question as to which instrument gets the lion's share of virtuosity here. Beethoven was not going to let himself be overshadowed by a mere cellist!

The third sonata, the A major, Op 69, inhabits a different world altogether. Beethoven worked on this sonata between 1806 and 1808; by then, his deafness was acute, if not quite complete. In his tragic letter known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, written in October 1802, Beethoven had admitted that he had harboured thoughts of suicide. "It was only my art that held me back.

Oh, it seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt was within me." Yet this sonata - in common with several other works from the same period - is one of the most positive works imaginable; from the opening phrase, it radiates serenity, humour and joy.

There is not a note that is trivial, however. The A major Sonata is a thoroughly classical work, its proportions carefully measured, the themes answering each other in perfect symmetry. It is also the first equal sonata for cello and piano. Previous cello sonatas had either been cello solos with continuo accompaniment or, like Beethoven's first two, piano sonatas with cello obbligato. Here, every theme is perfectly conceived for both instruments; Beethoven had invented a new genre.

The "late" period of Beethoven's creative life is generally said to have begun around 1815. If so, the two cello sonatas Op 102, both dating from that year, would be among the first examples of that miraculous group of masterpieces. They certainly exude the atmosphere of other-worldliness, of transcendent spirituality, that characterise his last utterances. The differences between these two sonatas and their predecessors are immediately striking.

For a start, they are far shorter - approximately half as long as either of the first two. Everything here is concentrated, each gesture kept to its bare essentials. They are also far more closely argued, each note occupying an important place in the overall structure.

The fourth sonata, in the "basic" key of C major, opens with a simple two-bar phrase. It is from this apparently straightforward beginning, however, that the entire work develops; practically every note is derived from those two bars. The last sonata, in D major, takes off in other new directions.

After the dramatic opening movement, Beethoven gives us, for the first time in these works, a full slow movement, a prayer that must surely be the most beautiful movement ever written for cello and piano. But after that glimpse of eternity, he returns us to earth with a fugue that is positively rollicking.

And yet for all its sense of fun - and it is fun - the fugue also conveys a strong sense of achievement, of defiant finality; after struggles that would have destroyed a lesser being, Beethoven has emerged in heroic triumph and we can hear him exulting as he bids farewell to the cello sonata.

Credits : The Story Behind Beethoven's Cello Sonatas
               By Steven Isserlis
               The Guardian, January 2007 

Beethoven's Violin Sonatas

Beethoven described his 10 Violin Sonatas, written over 15 years in the "early" and "middle" periods of his career, as works "for piano and violin". We tend to think of them as the reverse: for solo violin with piano accompaniment.

The misconception is ours, not Beethoven's. Except in the earliest examples – the three youthful sonatas in Opus 12 – the two instruments achieve satisfying balance, each a robust character grabbing at every ounce of melodic and harmonic invention Beethoven offers.

German violinist Isabelle Faust, playing a Stradivarius, and her ebullient, perceptive pianist, Russian Alexander Melnikov on a Steinway, are ideal partners, wrestling with the musical dialogue with poise, imagination and freshness. The constant interplay of tune and accompaniment, whether as teasing embellishment or bold contrast, gives these works a vitality which Faust and Melnikov unlock in their music-making.

This four-disc set, indicates the seriousness of their approach. They have gone back to Beethoven's original manuscripts to sharpen their understanding of music they have played since youth. The result is direct, unvarnished performances, informed both by period instrument technique and, in Faust's case especially, by considerable experience of playing contemporary music. This reveals itself in an analytical clarity, specially in the last of the set, the bewitching No 10 in G major, Op 96.

Surprising though it now seems, given the preponderance of female string players in modern orchestras, the violin used to be considered a man's instrument. Anne-Sophie Mutter was the first woman to record a complete cycle only a decade ago, joining a catalogue of greats such as Oistrakh, Szeryng, Stern and Perlman and preferring a meaty, more romantic sound. The playing on this new Harmonia Mundi set is so taut and vivid that these older, much admired recordings sound stolid in comparison.

 Outside the world of violinists, the best known of the 10 are those with nicknames, the radiant "Spring" Sonata in F major Op 24 and the majestic "Kreutzer" Op 47, which inspired a Tolstoy story. Faust and Melnikov make light, supple work of the opening allegro of the "Spring", with discreet use of vibrato and no heaviness in phrasing or ornament. Their "Kreutzer" is vigorous and free from portentousness. Outstanding, and essential listening.

Credits : Beethoven Complete Violin Sonatas -- A Review
               By Fiona Maddocks
               The Guardian, Sunday September 27, 2009