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Beethoven's 32 Sonatas with 64 pianists: Op. 53 ("Waldstein") · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

• 0:00
  This is Jed Distler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano recordings.
• 0:15
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• 0:23
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• 0:32
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• 0:35
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• 0:45
  I've been going through each and every one of the 32 numbered Beethoven sonatas during this little mini series that's part of the podcast as we begin our second season.
• 1:00
  And my game plan has been to recommend two recordings for each work, one being an historic recording, meaning archival or something from the 78 RPM, shellac era or the mono LP era.
• 1:17
  And then the other recording is stereo or digital, which you would call it a modern recording, even though stereo goes back almost 70 years. So that's historic by definition.
• 1:32
  But anyway, we demarcate these two categories the way we've been doing it. And that's that.
• 1:40
  But the ground rule is that we cannot repeat a pianist, which means that we will have 64 pianists in total with 32 sonatas, two pianists per sonata.
• 1:54
  The biggest challenge for me during this whole process has been with those instances where my gut instinct is to recommend pianist X for a certain work,
• 2:07
  only to remember that I had chosen pianist X for another piece. For example, I chose Arter Schnabel for the very first Beethoven sonata as my historic choice for the simple reason that no other historic recording of opus two number one comes close to Schnabel.
• 2:27
  But then I could not use Schnabel for opus 27 number one, which would have been my natural first choice. So I had to do some deep diving. And fortunately, Yasha Spivakovsky's recording of that work had recently surfaced and it matched Schnabel in all important aspects.
• 2:46
  So I was lucky in that case. Now with today's work, we are truly spoiled for choice because Beethoven's Sonata number 21 in C major, the Waldstein Sonata, is one of this composer's most famous, most beloved and most significant.
• 3:07
  In many ways, the Waldstein is the keyboard equivalent of the Fifth Symphony, because like the Fifth Symphony, the Waldstein builds a large and powerful structure out of the most seemingly basic and even banal motives and harmonies.
• 3:27
  Yet aside from that, the music is overtly virtuosic in its use of runs and broken octaves and rotary arpeggios and similar figurations, not to mention some really innovative pedal effects and all of these gestures invariably grab your attention and perk up your ears.
• 3:48
  Yet the music can almost sound trite if you play it merely for effect. But if you go the opposite end and try to downplay the virtuosic elements in search of profundity, the music can sound pretentious and it does in certain performances.
• 4:09
  So in a certain sense, the Waldstein is vulnerable to its interpreters, although its strong structural guardrails will always prevent the music from crumbling into dust.
• 4:23
  And one cannot imagine the Waldstein Sonata ever crumbling into dust. It's always been a firm pianistic monument in the repertoire and it always will be, I imagine.
• 4:36
  Let's talk about my historic choice. I would have chose Artur Schnabel had I not chosen him for Op. 2 No. 1. However, I want to talk about Rudolf Sierkin.
• 4:47
  I think this is a very good historic choice because he recorded the Sonata in 1952. He was a really remarkable Beethoven pianist in the sense that he was a stickler for textual rectitude and for never taking the easy way out.
• 5:04
  But the results were never rigid, at least in his prime, because of, I guess, the overwhelming intensity and his powers of projection and that unswerving concentration that characterized Rudolf Sierkin's best performances.
• 5:23
  His 1952 studio recording for Columbia Masterworks of the Waldstein Sonata embodies these qualities to such a high degree that I think that the quintessential Beethoven and the quintessential Rudolf Sierkin somehow emerge into a single exhilarating entity.
• 5:47
  I do have to admit that sometimes the flinty quality of Sierkin's sonority does not allow him to sustain long introspective paragraphs to, say, Schnabel's poetic degree or that of Claudio Aurao.
• 6:05
  But he equates himself surprisingly well in the introduction to the rondo. It really holds your attention.
• 6:13
  And just as an aside, when Rudolf Sierkin played those octave glissandos in the rondo movement's coda, he would very quickly spit on his right thumb right before launching into that passage.
• 6:28
  And I've seen his former students imitate that, and I would bet the farm that Sierkin did that in the recording sessions, although obviously you can't see him do this on an audio recording.
• 6:43
  Sierkin re-recorded the Waldstein, by the way, twice in stereo, once in analog in 1975, I think, and then once in digital in, I think, the late 1980s.
• 6:59
  I can't remember the date and I'm too lazy to pull down the CD, even though I wrote the notes for that CD, so I should know.
• 7:07
  But it is the 1952 mono Waldstein that best represents Rudolf Sierkin's really compelling way with the sonata.
• 7:17
  And I think it's a highlight of his discography, plus the fact that this notoriously self-critical pianist did sign off on that release, the 1952 release.
• 7:30
  The other two recordings came out after he died, so I don't know if he had signed off on those, but 1952, the Waldstein sonata, Rudolf Sierkin, that's my historic recommendation.
• 7:44
  Now for my modern recorded recommendation of the Waldstein, I think you're going to be surprised because I'm going to recommend a period instrument recording as my top modern choice.
• 7:57
  And this is the recording by Ronald Brautigam. It's on the Biss label.
• 8:02
  He's playing on a beautifully regulated and restored McNulty forte piano based on an 1819 Conrad Graf forte piano.
• 8:13
  I reviewed this recording for ClassicsToday.com and I vividly remember being totally knocked out when I first heard it, and I listened to it a bunch of times before I committed my pen to paper, so to speak.
• 8:30
  But I think that my original review is succinct and descriptive enough for me to quote from it at length because it pinpoints just what makes this interpretation so special.
• 8:42
  So excuse me while I quote from myself, and I wrote the following.
• 8:48
  Ronald Brautigam's Waldstein easily takes its place alongside this warhorse's great recorded versions. It has everything. Schnabel's brio in spiritual depth, Solomon's unflappable digital acumen, Bruce Hungerford's firmly etched articulation, and Claudio Arau's color, plus more.
• 9:12
  And tension emerged not so much through speed alone as by way of Brautigam's precisely timed modifications of the basic pulse, his placement of accents, and his way of characterizing contrasting themes without belaboring the obvious.
• 9:31
  The singular timbral qualities of Brautigam's instrument enhance the pianist's interpretive revelations. For example, every note of the first movement's low register repeated chords registers clearly rather than the muddy haze one often hears on modern concert grands.
• 9:52
  The rondo's long pedal markings finally make sense as you hear the timbrely distinct upper and lower registers interact and sustain without blurring.
• 10:05
  I also suspect that the instrument's lighter action accounts as much for the nimble passagework and astounding octave glissandi as Brautigam's practice routine.
• 10:18
  My original rating for this release was wow, which translates into 10-10. Don't miss it.
• 10:27
  Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't seek out a stereo or digital recording of the Waldstein on a modern concert grand because, like I said earlier, we are spoiled for choice. And I certainly would not want to be without pianists already discussed in this miniseries like Bruce Hungerford and Igor Levitt, Stuart Goodyear.
• 10:48
  I also should mention Jean Muller, a pianist from Luxembourg who has a really excellent live Beethoven sonata cycle that I only became aware of after I made my big list of 64 pianists.
• 11:03
  And indeed the Jean Muller Beethoven cycle deserves its own podcast episode.
• 11:09
  And I know that for the historic recording, a lot of people are going to say, why didn't you mention Solomon? Well, I did mention it in context, but fear not because Solomon is coming up very, very soon.
• 11:22
  But his mono LP era Waldstein is breathtakingly accurate in scintillating. He does take Beethoven's pedal markings with a grain of salt, though.
• 11:33
  Also, the earlier of Maurizio Polini's two stereo Waldstein sonata recordings ranks in my top 10 Waldstein picks.
• 11:43
  But it is true that the forte piano can reveal this music's physical characteristics in ways that are much more difficult to do so on a modern concert grand, as I mentioned earlier.
• 11:56
  I also think that it's important to acknowledge the considerable impact that the period performance movement has had on the interpretive zeitgeist in both positive and negative ways.
• 12:09
  And believe me, I have heard some pretty vile and putrid period instrument Beethoven piano sonata performances.
• 12:20
  I've reviewed some of them for ClassicsToday.com, and I invite you to go look at some of those reviews.
• 12:27
  But Ronald Brautigam's virtuosity, intelligence, and his deep sense of style all deserve serious attention.
• 12:36
  So I have no hesitation at all to recommend his Waldstein for my modern choice on our list of 32 Beethoven sonatas with 64 pianists.
• 12:49
  This is Jed Disler, and you've been listening to The Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano recordings.
• 12:58
  So join me next time, and we're going to be talking about Beethoven's Sonata in F Major, No. 22, Op. 54.