Latest / The Piano Maven with Jed Distler / Beethoven's 32 Sonatas with 64 pianists: Op. 2 Nos. 1, 2 & 3

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Beethoven's 32 Sonatas with 64 pianists: Op. 2 Nos. 1, 2 & 3 · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  This is Jed Distler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
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  recordings.
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  Happy New Year to you all and welcome to the first episode in our second season.
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  You can now find the Piano Maven podcast on Substack where a paid subscription to my Substack
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  page enables you and I to chat about all things related to the piano and piano recordings
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  and piano topics and well, everything about the piano.
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  And you also will receive invitations to participate in live Zoom chats where we will share listening
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  experiences and sometimes we will host special guests.
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  So please consider a paid subscription to my Piano Maven Substack by visiting the link
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  provided in the episode description which is https colon and two slashes going to the
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  right Jed Distler Music.
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  You will be glad you subscribed.
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  So we're going to begin our second season with a mini series where I'm going to go
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  through all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas and I'm going to recommend two recordings for
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  each sonata.
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  This is an idea that stems back to the pandemic when we were living in uncertainty and we
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  were disinfecting our mail and we were shooting up Clorox.
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  No, I wasn't doing that.
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  But anyway, a fellow Piano Maven friend of mine challenged me to come up with a list
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  of recommended recordings for each of the 32 Beethoven sonatas but without repeating
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  one single pianist.
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  In other words, I could not nominate a pianist for more than one sonata.
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  So I thought, okay, very well.
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  Since all of my concerts were cancelled, I have tons of time on my hands now.
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  So let me dig through my collection and see if I could face up to this challenge or rather
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  this dare.
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  And not only did I manage to come up with 32 different pianists for 32 Beethoven sonatas,
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  but I also came up with a sub list of so-called historic recordings.
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  So I wound up with two lists, the historic list, meaning recordings from the 78 RPM era
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  or mono LP era or live concert or radio broadcast recordings made for archival purposes but
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  subsequently issued or made available publicly in some way, shape or form.
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  And then my second list consisted of stereo or digital commercial recordings.
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  And these could also be live, but only if they were commercial in nature and not primarily
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  archival, in other words, intended for public release.
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  So here was the hard part.
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  I did not allow myself to use the same pianist twice on either list.
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  So that means we're going to be talking about a total of 32 sonatas and 64 pianists, 64
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  performances.
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  And I had to try to do this with no weak links so far as the performances were concerned.
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  And I think I've done a fairly good job of that, as you will see as this mini series
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  transpires.
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  But on these lists, I've tried really hard to represent as wide an overview of Beethoven
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  pianists as possible, encompassing more than a whole century's worth of interpretive options.
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  And as it turned out, with one exception, all of these performances that I will be recommending
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  in these podcasts have either been commercially available or available through free websites
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  like archive.org or IMSLP.
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  I think only one performance you have to seek out the LP, which has probably not been digitized
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  somewhere outside of some news group or something.
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  But let's get to the music.
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  And for this first episode, I'm going to talk about recordings of Beethoven's first three
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  piano sonatas, opus two, numbers one, two, and three.
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  And even with this early opus number, opus two, you somehow know right away that you
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  are dealing with a composer who's a master of form, a master of concision, and a composer
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  who fused form and content like few other composers have in the history of classical
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  music.
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  The sonata number one in F minor, opus two, number one, is in four movements.
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  And for my historic performance choice, the recording by Arter Schnabel really remains
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  a knockout.
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  He throws himself into the outer movements with such hurling brio and intensity as if
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  his life depended on it.
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  One could imagine Beethoven at the keyboard improvising and foaming at the mouth, just
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  coming out with this music out of nowhere.
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  It's like a bucking bronco racing out from the starting gate the way Schnabel plays this
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  piece.
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  My modern recommendation for opus two, number one, comes from the Beethoven cycle for the
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  EMI label by the pianist Stephen Kovacevich.
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  And I think he matches Schnabel in nearly every way.
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  I mean, there's no courtly or prim sounding minuet from him.
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  For the piano sonata number two in A major, opus two, number two, I've picked for my
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  historic performance choice a mono recording from the 1950s with the French pianist Robert
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  Cassadessoux.
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  I like his interpretation because of its leanness and its sense of bite and its transparency
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  and freedom from any sentimentality at all.
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  I also like these similar qualities and an even more inflected and linearly aware interpretation
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  by Bruce Hungerford, the Australian pianist who began recording a complete Beethoven cycle
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  for the Vanguard label in the 1970s.
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  He never finished the cycle because he lost his life in a car crash in January 1977 when
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  he was killed by a drunk driver.
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  So his Beethoven cycle, although it remains incomplete, is absolutely priceless.
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  Let's go now to the sonata in C major, opus two, number three.
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  And my historic choice probably will not surprise many of you piano mavens.
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  Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli had one of the smallest public repertoires among all great
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  pianists and he tended to play the same pieces time and time again.
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  He only recorded three of Beethoven's sonatas commercially.
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  In 1941, when he was 21, he recorded the C major, opus two, number three, sonata for
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  each MV and even if some of Michelangeli's faster playing borders on being glib, he already
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  displays amazing evenness and control.
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  And these qualities really matter in a composition that does have a lot of virtuoso display in
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  it.
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  By contrast, my modern era stereo choice for this sonata is a recording by Arthur Rubinstein
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  and his Beethoven is more urbane and eloquent in contrast to the angular, edgy style one
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  associates with Schnabel and his pupils, for example.
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  But the freshness and the youthful ardor that Rubinstein projects belies the fact that he
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  was in his mid-70s when he made this recording.
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  I remember the first time I heard it, it was on the radio and David Dubal had a program
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  on WNCN, the long gone New York radio station where he was music director.
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  And he had a series of programs where he was comparing different pianists in Beethoven's
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  sonatas.
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  And I remember that he played the opus two, number three, first movement.
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  He played it in a recording first with the 20 something Daniel Barenboim and then he
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  played the same movement with Rubinstein in this recording.
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  And then David Dubal asks, which of the two pianists sounded younger or older?
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  I did enjoy both recordings but I did remember that Rubinstein seemed to have a little more
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  kick in his step or fire in his belly.
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  Actually, if you compare the finale, the bup-bup-bup-bup-bup-bup-bup-bup-bup-bup-bup-bup-bup-bup-bup you know what I'm talking about.
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  really takes a wonderful dash and plays with a lot of brio. I mean the word brio
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  always comes up when I talk about Beethoven. You always see Allegro Com
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  brio, right, in his scores. But I think this Rubinstein recording is one of the
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  very best versions of opus 2 number 3 out there. This is Jet Disler and I thank
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  you for listening to the piano maven and for all of your support and again please
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  consider a sub stack subscription. I think you will be glad that you did and
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  I look forward to being with you tomorrow as we talk about Beethoven's
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  sonata opus 7.