Latest / The Piano Maven with Jed Distler / Beethoven's 32 Sonatas with 64 pianists: Op. 27 No. 1 and No. 2 ("Moonlight")

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Beethoven's 32 Sonatas with 64 pianists: Op. 27 No. 1 and No. 2 ("Moonlight") · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

• 0:00
  This is Jett Disler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano recordings.
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• 0:23
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• 0:32
  So please consider subscribing to help us reach out further into the piano community and to keep this podcast in production.
• 0:42
  This month we are in the middle of a mini series within the Piano Maven podcast.
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  We are going through all 32 Beethoven sonatas in numerical order, recommending two recordings for each sonata,
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  each with a different pianist for each recording and not repeating one pianist.
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  How ambitious is that? So there will be 64 pianists in all.
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  Each sonata is represented by two recordings.
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  As I said, one recording is a historic recording, meaning from 78s or a mono LP or an archival recording
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  that's been commercially issued or very readily available online.
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  And the second recommended recording is one that is modern, meaning from the stereo era or the digital domain.
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  We now reach the two sonatas comprising Beethoven's Opus 27.
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  First, let me give you a little bit of history.
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  According to Beethoven's pupil Carl Czerny, the composer told his friend Krumpholz, whomever that was,
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  that quote unquote, I am only a little satisfied with my previous works.
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  From today, I will take a new path.
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  Beethoven said this around the time that he was composing his two so-called fantasy sonatas, Opus 27.
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  These works would ultimately point the way toward a looser and more overtly virtuosic and dramatic brand of piano writing
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  that would set the course for the works of Beethoven's middle period, like the Opus 31 sonatas, the Waldstein and the Appassionata,
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  all of which we will be talking about in episodes to come.
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  But let's talk about Opus 27.
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  The first of these two sonatas is the one in E-flat major, Opus 27, number one.
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  It tends to be overshadowed, of course, by its opus mate number two, which of course is the famous Moonlight sonata.
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  But the E-flat sonata is no less original, no less surprising, no less creative, and no less inspired.
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  I think it's one of my favorite sonatas for sure.
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  The first movement has a very disarming theme, and right off the bat, Beethoven plays tricks
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  when he brings the theme back in an unexpected key.
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  And then there's this crazy interruption of fast music, like a sudden hailstorm breaking out on a sunny afternoon.
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  And then the scherzo is in a scampering triple meter, and it's one of Beethoven's most fun and even one of his most zany movements.
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  And then there's a lyrical slower movement that's followed immediately by a petulant finale that, however,
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  reiterates music from the slow movement as if being a little bit reluctant to let that memory go.
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  But the finale does end decisively and joyously.
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  My historic performance choice for Opus 27 No. 1 is represented by an unusually vibrant and very joyful interpretation
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  that comes from a 1957 broadcast by the pianist, Yasha Spivakovsky.
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  Some of you may have heard of him, some of you may not have heard of him.
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  He was a pianist who made no commercial recordings.
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  He may have made one or two early in his career, but essentially he did not record.
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  But the pristine classical company did bring out an extensive series of live and broadcast performances of Spivakovsky,
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  as well as home recordings that he made.
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  And all of these really bring his remarkable artistry to light.
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  My friend and colleague, Mark Einley, who runs The Piano Files with Mark Einley,
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  presented this performance on his Facebook page, and he's written a lot about Spivakovsky.
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  And he's the one who turned me on to this pianist in the first place.
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  And I do recommend that you check out The Piano Files with Mark Einley.
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  It's a wonderful Facebook page devoted to historic pianists primarily.
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  And on that page, Mark posts links to rare recordings,
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  and he also posts extensive and scholarly articles about these pianists.
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  And if you are a fellow piano maven, and I know you are because you're listening to this podcast,
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  you have to check out The Piano Files with Mark Einley.
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  I've posted a link to the Yasha Spivakovsky performance and to the pristine classical website
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  where you can purchase a wide array of historic performances in vivid transfers by Andrew Rose.
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  This is a wonderful resource for historic recordings.
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  My modern performance pick for Op. 27 No. 1 is pianist Boris Giltberg.
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  In 2020, Giltberg set out to record a complete Beethoven sonata cycle,
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  which was released in both audio and video versions on Noxus.
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  And his invigorating performance of Op. 27 No. 1 I think is one of his cycle's high points.
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  I've posted a link to his website where you can watch and hear Giltberg's performance.
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  Now sometimes I find that this pianist can be a little madder,
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  especially when he plays Rachmaninoff in Liszt.
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  But I have been enjoying a lot of his Beethoven,
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  and he is in complete stylistic sympathy with this piece.
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  It's a really, really strong performance.
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  So now we reach the Moonlight Sonata.
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  It was composed in 1801.
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  Beethoven had nothing to do with its nickname, by the way.
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  The Moonlight title originates with a German critic and poet named Ludwig Rellstop,
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  who wrote somewhere that the first movement Adagio Sostenuto
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  evoked a vision of a boat on Lake Lucerne by moonlight.
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  And this imagery, for better or worse, has stuck to this day.
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  It's no wonder, perhaps, that the Adagio Sostenuto movement has become a kind of cliché.
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  It's been anthologized and boulderized and parodied to death for centuries,
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  and I think it always will be, I'm afraid.
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  But the more that one gets to know all three movements of the sonata,
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  the better one can appreciate the music's utter originality,
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  its expressive diversity, and its sheer compactness of form and expression.
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  And I think because this sonata is so popular
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  that it's worth talking about the music a little bit.
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  Consider, for starters, Beethoven's choice of key, C-sharp minor.
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  That was kind of unusual for the time.
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  How many composers were writing sonatas in C-sharp minor?
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  I'm sure there were others. I can't really think of them off the top of my head.
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  But all three movements share the tonality of C-sharp.
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  I mean, the central allegretto is in D-flat,
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  which is C-sharp's enharmonic equivalent, of course.
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  The pianist Glenn Gould aptly characterized these three superficially disparate movements
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  as an entity adding up to, and I quote,
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  a masterpiece of intuitive organization that escalates from the first note to the last.
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  That's a great description of the piece, I think, from Glenn Gould.
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  The opening movement, the famous Adagio sostenuto's placid ostinato accompaniment, for instance,
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  directly relates to the presto finale's galvanizing upward arpeggios,
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  while the phrase shapes that characterize the first movement's long contabules
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  become shorter and more compressed in the allegretto.
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  Now, because the moonlight has been recorded a hundred gazillion times,
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  picking two representative recordings, an historic one and a modern one, was not an easy task.
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  In fact, last year I wrote a Gramophone Collection article
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  where I discussed about 20 or so recorded versions of the moonlight.
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  And believe it or not, I have more than 320 recorded versions of the moonlight sonata in my collection.
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  Is that kind of insane or what?
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  However, the modern recommendation that I will make here
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  actually did not figure in the four top choices that I picked for my Gramophone article.
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  I do think that this is a highly distinctive and strong and original interpretation.
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  And this modern pick of mine is a recording that was made for the Phillips label by Misha Dichter.
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  I think it's one of the most overlooked and underrated moonlights in the catalogue, actually.
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  The adagio is on the brisk side, but it's full of poetic introspection.
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  And the central allegretto contains some really unusual and interesting,
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  yet totally plausible and logical inner voice movement,
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  as if the music was for a string quartet instead of ten fingers on a keyboard.
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  Now, the presto finale does not go at the kind of whirlwind clip that younger pianists tend to favour these days.
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  They tend to think of the music as an Olympic event rather than a piece of music.
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  But Misha Dichter's conservative tempo allows for a resolute steadiness,
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  and it also allows the big dynamic contrasts to really speak out and register with fullest impact.
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  And the more that I hear this recording, the more that I feel that it deserves much more attention than it gets.
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  Originally it came out on Phillips, and it's been reissued on SACD by Pentatone.
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  I don't know if that disc is still available.
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  But, you know, I wrote the booklet notes for Sony BMG's recent edition of Misha Dichter's complete RCA Victor albums reissue.
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  And for that reissue I actually interviewed the pianist.
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  And when I was talking with Misha Dichter, we both agreed that it would be great for Universal Classics,
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  maybe Australian Eloquence, could reissue all of his Phillips recordings and put them all in a box,
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  because so many of the recordings he did for Phillips have kind of fallen between the cracks and haven't been available for a long time.
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  My historic recording choice for the Moonlight Sonata was not easy to make,
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  simply because the Sonata was recorded quite often in the 78 era, by all the usual suspects, of course.
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  Now, I mean no slight nor any disrespect to the shellac era's top-tier Moonlight contenders,
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  like Ignatz Friedman, Arter Schnabel, Wilhelm Bockhaus, Ben Omojsejevic, and Egon Petri,
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  when I nominated a recording from 1927 by Harold Bauer as my historic recommendation.
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  You know, when I was preparing my gramophone overview of the Moonlight on record,
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  I kept going back to that Harold Bauer recording.
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  It's an absolutely beautiful Moonlight. He treats the first movement in a long-lined a la brev style,
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  meaning that he feels the music in either one or two slow beats to a bar, rather than laying on each beat.
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  You know, more like ya da da da da da da da.
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  I'm trying to give like a fluency to that phrase rather than
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  bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom
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  eee eee eee
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  You know, which is so damn boring.
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  And his interpretation is very poetic.
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  It's characterized by all kinds of quote-unquote
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  old school devices like left-hand anticipations
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  and retarded cadences.
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  But these always sound organic and inevitable.
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  The allegretto is genial rather than being terse.
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  But Harrell Bauer pulls expressive rabbits out of the hat.
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  He likes these ear-catching diminuendos,
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  and he emphasizes the offbeat accents in very subtle ways.
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  It's really appealing.
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  But Harrell Bauer's way with the first two movements
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  leaves you unprepared for a finale
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  that I think has rarely been surpassed on disc
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  for sheer controlled abandon.
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  It's like all of a sudden the demons have been unleashed.
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  But again, Harrell Bauer does not lose control.
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  It's a really, really special performance,
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  and I think it has stood the test of time wonderfully well
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  since 1927.
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  That's 98 years, my goodness.
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  This is Jed Disler,
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  and you've been listening to The Piano Maven,
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  your friendly podcast guide to piano recordings.
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  And I look forward to being with you next time
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  when we recommend two recordings of Beethoven's next sonata in line,
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  the Sonata No. 15, Op. 28,
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  the so-called Pastoral Sonata.
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  And I'm sure you will want to tune in
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  to find out which versions I will recommend.
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  Do you think you can guess which ones I'm going to recommend?
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  Well, you've got to tune in to find out.
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  In the meantime, take care and stay safe.