# Beethoven Piano Sonatas



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Anyone else find them rather abstract and think it would be hard to convey meaning in performance?


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

The flow of them, aside from moonlight, is rather jagged in the wrong hands, I think!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Captainnumber36 said:


> The flow of them, aside from moonlight, is rather jagged in the wrong hands, I think!


I guess I've never encountered them in the wrong hands, unless the hands were mine, struggling with them.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> I guess I've never encountered them in the wrong hands, unless the hands were mine, struggling with them.


It just seems that compared to Mozart's, the task of making the Sonatas flow is more difficult with Beethoven. More ups and downs, more variety much less so with Mozart who is steady and proud.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Captainnumber36 said:


> It just seems that compared to Mozart's, the task of making the Sonatas flow is more difficult with Beethoven. More ups and downs, more variety much less so with Mozart who is steady and proud.


I often make these comparisons in my own mind in an Olympic way: Degree of difficulty and excellence of execution. Both with regard to composing, of course, not performance.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Captainnumber36 said:


> It just seems that compared to Mozart's, the task of making the Sonatas flow is more difficult with Beethoven. More ups and downs, more variety much less so with Mozart who is steady and proud.


Yes, Beethoven is more prone to dramatic changes, mysterious interludes, strange pauses, etc., that require a sense of timing and proportion.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> Yes, Beethoven is more prone to dramatic changes, mysterious interludes, strange pauses, etc., that require a sense of timing and proportion.


Exactly. It really makes me want to explore lots of different versions of these works. It just seems like there would be so much variety of interpretation!


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## Clouds Weep Snowflakes (Feb 24, 2019)

I love them, especially Moonlight Sonata!


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## ojoncas (Jan 3, 2019)

I have yet to find a great version of the Rondo from the Waldstein... or of the finale from the Appassionata. The are numberous good ones, but nothing that, imho, really seem to speak clearly of what’s happening in the story..


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Captainnumber36 said:


> It just seems that compared to Mozart's, the task of making the Sonatas flow is more difficult with Beethoven. More ups and downs, more variety much less so with Mozart who is steady and proud.


Any thoughts about why Beethoven decided to adopt a style with so many ups and downs?

(I'll just mention that I've been thinking hard about this sort of question in literature, where an author I'm interested in called François Bon sometimes chooses a style which is fragmented, broken by abrupt and unexpected changes of register. There, I think it's mimetic, a representation of a state of mind . . . )


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## Hermastersvoice (Oct 15, 2018)

Now and again a recording comes to the market which throws new light on an old war horse. So it was some years ago when Orfeo unearthed Austrian radio broadcasts of Gulda’s first cycle. This is a young man’s vision, the mood swings and pauses, the difficulty of getting these pieces to flow, as mentioned, simply don’t exist. The freedom of spirit, the total lack of any pianistic constraints is a marvel. Think Richter’s Rach 2. Also mesmerizing how much was lost with Gulda 2 which followed shortly thereafter. It’s like not the same interpreter, but that’s a separate point.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Hermastersvoice said:


> the mood swings and pauses, the difficulty of getting these pieces to flow, as mentioned, simply don't exist.


Are you saying that this a good thing or a bad thing?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Captainnumber36 said:


> more variety much less so with Mozart who is steady and proud.


Again, if you made this thread and mentioned Mozart with the intention of adding "Beethoven has a stronger voice, even in the sonatas." as one of your points, let me remind you Beethoven's achievement in the 'keyboard fantasies' (including the G minor Op.77) isn't quite at the same level as Mozart's  (which many extreme Beethoven enthusiasts claiming "Beethoven sonatas are better!" fail to see). It's not the proper way to compare them cause the types of instruments available to them and the aesthetic qualities they had were different.

_"Beethoven made his own copy of K608 and procured a copy of K.594."_
("Automatic Genius: Mozart and the Mechanical Sublime" by Annette Richards)

Fugue in G minor K401: 



Fantasy in F minor K594: 






hammeredklavier said:


> In a different way from Haydn, - Mozart ( with his sonatas + fantasy-like pieces K394, K396, K397, K475, K511, K540, K594, K608, K616, K624 ) acted like a bridge between Bach (keyboard fantasies) and Beethoven (sonatas), in such a way that as time went, Bach -> Mozart (+CPE Bach) -> Beethoven, the genre 'piano sonata' became more important as a improvisatory genre on its own. You can see how Mozart preferred to write stuff like Fantasia & Sonata (K475 & K457), while Beethoven would write Sonata Quasi Una Fantasia (Op.27 No.2)


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Hermastersvoice said:


> Now and again a recording comes to the market which throws new light on an old war horse. So it was some years ago when Orfeo unearthed Austrian radio broadcasts of Gulda's first cycle. This is a young man's vision, the mood swings and pauses, the difficulty of getting these pieces to flow, as mentioned, simply don't exist. The freedom of spirit, the total lack of any pianistic constraints is a marvel. Think Richter's Rach 2. Also mesmerizing how much was lost with Gulda 2 which followed shortly thereafter. It's like not the same interpreter, but that's a separate point.


This one?


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

The Beethoven sonatas sound like Beethoven. The Mozart sonatas sound like Mozart. I wouldn't have it any other way.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_Anyone else find them rather abstract and think it would be hard to convey meaning in performance? _

I would say the opposite: they are a living example of Beethoven maturing, finding his voice and seeing the world very differently at the end of his life with his deafness. I don't think these are abstract works at all; as early as No. 3 the leonine nature of Beethoven has been exposed.

They are also precursors of what's to come. Beethoven tried out music in the piano sonatas he later used in symphonies and elsewhere. His famous march from the Eroica symphony Op. 55 is also used in the Sonata No. 12 Op. 26 subtitled the Funeral March.

Beethoven exposed more of his personality and humanity in the piano sonatas than anywhere save the string quartets, in my opinion. His early ones expose an important voice dying to be heard, followed by the mature, romantic ones. His sonatas Nos. 8, 12, 15, 17, 21 and 23 all portray highly romanticized ideas and ideals.

Yet even late in his life, after he went deaf, he was writing essentially friendly music such as the Sonata No. 26 subtitled Les Adieux or the return. This is one of four sonatas in succession, Nos. 24-27, that are basically happy in nature and not particularly complex.

They followed his section of romantic sonatas including No. 23, Appassionata, and came prior to his all is dust sonatas Nos. 28-32. His Sonata No. 29, the Hammerklavier named for the new piano of the time, is the king of all piano sonatas.

There aren't many composers whose lives are exposed as easily through one sequence of their art. That is the case with Beethoven's piano sonatas -- right to the last one, No. 32, which comes as close as anything in music to exemplifying the boundaries between life and afterlife through art


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

larold said:


> _Anyone else find them rather abstract and think it would be hard to convey meaning in performance? _
> 
> I would say the opposite: they are a living example of Beethoven maturing, finding his voice and seeing the world very differently at the end of his life with his deafness. I don't think these are abstract works at all; as early as No. 3 the leonine nature of Beethoven has been exposed.
> 
> ...


I don't get why he can't show personality and still be abstract and dramatic.


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## Hermastersvoice (Oct 15, 2018)

Mandryka. I’m simply saying that with Gulda I the diificulties don’t exist, they are obliterated.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Sure, and I expect you're right about Gulda. But there's something more interesting in the background here than just the question of finding someone with the technique and the will to play Beethoven in a very smooth way. It comes out clearly in the bit I put in bold in this remark



Captainnumber36 said:


> The flow of them, aside from moonlight, is rather jagged *in the wrong hands*, I think!


as if jagged is wrong. But why on earth should that be?

(Actually doesn't Gulda do something quite original in the first recording of the Moonlight sonata with the pedal? It's years since i heard it -- the Moonlight is the sonata singled out for special attention in that quote.)


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Clouds Weep Snowflakes said:


> I love them, especially Moonlight Sonata!


Moonlight Sonata is a wonderful sonata indeed! But the fact that you especially like that one probably means there's a lot more for you to discover in the other 31 sonata's ;-)


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_I don't get why he can't show personality and still be abstract and dramatic. _

If you mean the dictionary meaning of abstract, "existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence," then that is all music.

What I'm saying is I don't find Beethoven's piano music abstract in any way. I find it straightforward, lucid, with its goals and possible meanings easy to understand. Listening to the piano sonatas first to last mirror the composer's growth and life more than other composers.

I would think more of Brahms' solo piano music as abstract or the symphonies of Alan Pettersson.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

I find all music abstract BUT indeed Beethovens' piano sonata's are right there in front of you, straightforward, like a very close friend sharing all things in life without pose, pure and straight from the heart, an open heart with all it's vulnerabilities uncovered.

Name me one composer who does that better then Beethoven.


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## Clouds Weep Snowflakes (Feb 24, 2019)

Razumovskymas said:


> Moonlight Sonata is a wonderful sonata indeed! But the fact that you especially like that one probably means there's a lot more for you to discover in the other 31 sonata's ;-)


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

The Appassionata is an awesome one indeed, Clouds. This is my favorite recording:






Though it may not be to your tastes; Schnabel wasn't much of a looker. :lol:


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

My favorites are the Waldstein, Pathétique (immature as they may be, the first 10 sonatas are really good!), Les Adieux, 30, 32, Appasionata, Tempest, Moonlight, of course, 27, and 24. So many great ones to choose from. As for my favorite interpretations, it is Schnabel every time, but Wilhelm Kempff comes in a close second. I like Gilels on some of them, but the Beethoven sonatas do not represent my favorites among his great recordings.


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## Hermastersvoice (Oct 15, 2018)

Yep, that one. In my humble estimation nobody does Waldstein like Serkin, nobody brings out the lyricism of Appassionata like Kempf. But in terms of playing without constraints, absence of constraints, Gulda 1 beats them all. It’s the same quality of playing you find in his traversal of the Cello sonatas with Fournier.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Razumovskymas said:


> Moonlight Sonata is a wonderful sonata indeed! But the fact that you especially like that one probably means there's *a lot more for you to discover* in the other 31 sonata's ;-)





Clouds Weep Snowflakes said:


>


And also a lot to discover for Anastasia Huppmann as well. What's next?


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

flamencosketches said:


> The Appassionata is an awesome one indeed, Clouds. This is my favorite recording:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The Appassionata, along with Op.109 are my current favorites. And there's no way Arty can compete with that sexy video by Ms Huppmann!  But she's a little too smoothed over for my taste.

I have three versions by Gilels, O'Conor, and Louis Lortie. Waiting on the Kovacevich set. And would like to get hold of Arrau eventually.


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## Guest (Nov 25, 2019)

starthrower said:


> The Appassionata, along with Op.109 are my current favorites. And there's no way Arty can compete with that sexy video by Ms Huppmann!  But she's a little too smoothed over for my taste.
> 
> I have three versions by Gilels, O'Conor, and Louis Lortie. Waiting on the Kovacevich set. And would like to get hold of Arrau eventually.


The Kovacevich set is indeed excellent. I also have Brendel and Richter in this repertoire and there are things to like in all of them.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I'm not too overly picky except for the intros to the Moonlight, and Waldstein. Those are the movements I don't like by Lortie. Other than that it's a great sounding set.


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## Guest (Nov 25, 2019)

Razumovskymas said:


> I find all music abstract BUT indeed Beethovens' piano sonata's are right there in front of you, straightforward, like a very close friend sharing all things in life without pose, pure and straight from the heart, an open heart with all it's vulnerabilities uncovered.
> 
> Name me one composer who does that better then Beethoven.


Bach, possibly, but 'different' isn't necessarily 'better' anyway!! In a quite early Sonata we find this from Beethoven; at about 27 years of age he's saying "away with your classical constraints - it's my way or the highway'!! The Large e Mesto in Sonata No. 7 - absolutely stunning and indicative of those last five great, great piano sonatas:


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

A great Appassionata by Gilels.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

It's worth noting that even Beethoven's greatest admirers, Wagner and Berlioz were not particularly impressed or inspired by Op.106 and Op.111. (Berlioz regarded Op.57 as the greatest music ever written)
So, appreciation for the late Beethoven sonatas is a fairly modern thing. You might argue "because they were so advanced, they weren't appreciated in their time". But everything can be seen as "art" from the modernist perspective. Even stuff like John Cage's 4'33" is considered "art" these days. With that in mind, I have my doubts, what if the "late sonatas aren't really that great as people these days make them out to be?"
Don't get me wrong, there are many other works of Beethoven I find impressive. In my mind Beethoven's greatest piano sonata is Op.57.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._29_(Beethoven)
_"Richard Wagner held reservations for what he perceived as a lack of succinctness in its composition."_

https://books.google.ca/books?id=QafEkYAEX8QC&pg=PA116
_"In 1857 open letter on Liszt's symphonic poems Wagner mentions having first truly appreciated the "Hammerklavier" and C-minor sonatas (opp. 106, 111) after hearing private performances of them by Liszt."_



hammeredklavier said:


> _'A work greater than his greatest symphonies, greater than anything he wrote, and consequently greater than anything ever produced by the art of music'_
> (Berlioz on a performance by Mme Massart late in 1860 of Beethoven's Appassionata sonata (op. 57, in F Minor), reproduced in À travers chants in the chapter entitled 'Les temps sont proches')
> https://books.google.ca/books?id=vfODCaKHSbMC&pg=PA200
> 
> ...


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Captainnumber36 said:


> It just seems that compared to Mozart's, the task of making the Sonatas flow is more difficult with Beethoven. More ups and downs, more variety much less so with Mozart who is steady and proud.


Mozart's kind of drama is different from Beethoven's. While Beethoven was good at creating his kind of drama, I don't think I find the kind of operatic climax and conclusion like K608. Beethoven wrote that he would write an inversion fugue to contrast with the initial fugue in the last movement of Op.110, but he _didn't really make it_. Whereas, Mozart didn't write on the score that he would write a double fugue to to contrast with the initial fugue in K608 for an epic ending:


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

starthrower said:


> A great Appassionata by Gilels.


The Gilels is very fine but Richter's stands alone in my book.








hammeredklavier said:


> It's worth noting that even Beethoven's greatest admirers, Wagner and Berlioz were not particularly impressed or inspired by Op.106 and Op.111. (Berlioz regarded Op.57 as the greatest music ever written)
> So, appreciation for the late Beethoven sonatas is a fairly modern thing. You might argue "because they were so advanced, they weren't appreciated in their time". But everything can be seen as "art" from the modernist perspective. Even stuff like John Cage's 4'33" is considered "art" these days. With that in mind, I have my doubts, what if the "late sonatas aren't really that great as people these days make them out to be?"


I think you put too much weight on other people's opinions. I wouldn't care if every major composer sneered at B's late sonatas--to me, they're the pinnacle of his art, and nothing anyone says would change that opinion. Wagner might be my favorite composer, but the only reason I'm interested in his opinions is how that informs how I listen to Wagner, not how I listen to other composers--and same for any other composer, whose opinions on other composers I only find interesting for what it reveals about their own art and influences.

That said, op 57 is my favorite of the middle or early sonatas. For that matter, I like it better than op 101, and probably roughly even with 109 and 110. But to me, nothing else Beethoven wrote for either solo or ensemble touches 106 and 111.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

howlingfantods said:


> The Gilels is very fine but Richter's stands alone in my book.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Agreed! Richter is pretty special.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Can someone please tell me what Richter set or CD this performance is from?


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## Bigbang (Jun 2, 2019)

starthrower said:


> Can someone please tell me what Richter set or CD this performance is from?


I clicked on the Youtube link and scrolled down to see what label. RCA/Sony label, and coupled with Brahms 2 piano concerto. I found it available before under the Freegal website (Sony music).


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Okay, I got the link. Thanks!


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## Guest (Nov 26, 2019)

howlingfantods said:


> The Gilels is very fine but Richter's stands alone in my book.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Bravo. Couldn't agree more with your first paragraph.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

hammeredklavier said:


> It's worth noting that even Beethoven's greatest admirers, Wagner and Berlioz were not particularly impressed or inspired by Op.106 and Op.111. (Berlioz regarded Op.57 as the greatest music ever written)
> So, appreciation for the late Beethoven sonatas is a fairly modern thing. You might argue "because they were so advanced, they weren't appreciated in their time". But everything can be seen as "art" from the modernist perspective. Even stuff like John Cage's 4'33" is considered "art" these days. With that in mind, I have my doubts, what if the "late sonatas aren't really that great as people these days make them out to be?"
> Don't get me wrong, there are many other works of Beethoven I find impressive. In my mind Beethoven's greatest piano sonata is Op.57.
> 
> ...


I think that these wonderful late sonatas are very demanding both on the listeners and on the performers, and that only a legendary pianist such as Liszt could make justice to them back in those days of Beethoven rediscovery.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Any thoughts about why Beethoven decided to adopt a style with so many ups and downs?


Yes. Beethoven had a different conception of subjective time in music. For earlier composers, the time of the experience music embodied was more or less equivalent to objective clock time. This is why Classical Era program music is concrete and mostly onomatopoeic. Beethoven's most dramatic works are unmoored from objective time. In the first movement of the "Appassionata," the second theme doesn't follow a short moment after the first. The transition is a scene change with an indefinite temporal boundary. The second theme is a second distinct condition of the soul that emerges when the other one has raged itself into exhaustion. The movement plays out this and other oppositions outside the flow of objective time, like an allegorical drama of inner life. This is likely what ETA Hoffman and others sensed when they talked about his music embodying the infinite.


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

*"For me, Beethoven has always stood for the spirit of man victorious… In the sense that he mastered both his life and his art to reach the ultimate heights of creation and transfiguration, he will last as long as man's spirit to prevail lasts on earth… In the end, he reached a mystical union with the godhead, as it were, and on a higher plane of transcendence than almost anyone else in the history of Western art. Nowhere throughout his work is this struggle and final transcendence seen more clearly than in the body of the complete 32 piano sonatas, where Beethoven's creative development may be perceived in one unbroken line of continuous evolution from the forthright first sonatas Op. 2 to the other-world metaphysical language of Op. 111… Where did the ability come for Beethoven to overcome even the titanic in himself and enter spheres of such transcendent meaning as were never encountered in music before or, in all truth, since? Who could really foretell such a span of evolution which sees him create at the end what can only be called a metaphysical language of music - a musical language where trills become a trembling of the soul and arpeggios reach out into the infinite altogether, as in the Adagio espressivo sections of the opening movement of Op. 109. In Op. 111, the variations which follow the statement of the sublime Arietta are not even called variations, and rightly so because they are not variations in the usual sense but transformations and transfigurations of the theme. Here Beethoven reaches cosmic spaces which open up into infinitude, into a state of mystical rapture, which Goethe called "the fall upward" … As Hans Mersmann has written, "It is a great process of dissolving into which we are drawn, one of dematerialisation which dissolves all outlines. The solid turns into the flowing, the existence in time into the timeless eternal". But the wondrous thing about Beethoven is that this metaphysical language which reaches such heights and depths of human longing and transcendence and transfiguration is always expressed through purely musical means… This transformation and illumination that is achieved at the end of his life is truly so unique that one searches almost in vain for its counterpart in music, literature, or painting".

--Claudio Arrau*


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> Yes. Beethoven had a different conception of subjective time in music. For earlier composers, the time of the experience music embodied was more or less equivalent to objective clock time. This is why Classical Era program music is concrete and mostly onomatopoeic. Beethoven's most dramatic works are unmoored from objective time. In the first movement of the "Appassionata," the second theme doesn't follow a short moment after the first. The transition is a scene change with an indefinite temporal boundary. The second theme is a second distinct condition of the soul that emerges when the other one has raged itself into exhaustion. The movement plays out this and other oppositions outside the flow of objective time, like an allegorical drama of inner life. This is likely what ETA Hoffman and others sensed when they talked about his music embodying the infinite.


You know, I've very recently been looking over _The Sound and The Fury_, first time in many years. There's a drama of inner life! And maybe it shows how sonata form, a couple of themes, is a simplification of the task.

I'm going to listen to a Carter quartet soon.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> It's worth noting that even Beethoven's greatest admirers, Wagner and Berlioz were not particularly impressed or inspired by Op.106 and Op.111. (Berlioz regarded Op.57 as the greatest music ever written)
> So, appreciation for the late Beethoven sonatas is a fairly modern thing. You might argue "because they were so advanced, they weren't appreciated in their time". *But everything can be seen as "art" from the modernist perspective.* *Even stuff like John Cage's 4'33" is considered "art" these days.* With that in mind, I have my doubts, what if the "late sonatas aren't really that great as people these days make them out to be?"


So you're suggesting that Beethoven's late sonatas, like Cage's 4'33," may not be art from any but a "modernist perspective"? Or are you saying only that aesthetic judgments change over time? I should think the latter point fairly obvious and not in need of far-fetched comparisons. Analogy is a dangerous trap.

The world has had plenty of time to render judgment on Beethoven's work (and probably on Cage's, for that matter).


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> So you're suggesting that Beethoven's late sonatas, like Cage's 4'33," may not be art from any but a "modernist perspective"? Or are you saying only that aesthetic judgments change over time? I should think the latter point fairly obvious and not in need of far-fetched comparisons. Analogy is a dangerous trap.
> 
> The world has had plenty of time to render judgment on Beethoven's work (and probably on Cage's, for that matter).


What I'm interested in, Duck, is _how _aesthetic judgements change, how noise and ugliness becomes beautiful and deep. The forces that make the change. If you or anyone else know anything to read about how this happened for late Beethoven, please let me know.

In painting it seems to happen at least partly through financial investment. Van Gogh is a good case to think about. I'm not sure about music.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> What I'm interested in, Duck, is _how _aesthetic judgements change, how noise and ugliness becomes beautiful and deep. The forces that make the change. If you or anyone else know anything to read about how this happened for late Beethoven, please let me know.
> 
> In painting it seems to happen at least partly through financial investment. Van Gogh is a good case to think about. I'm not sure about music.


Well, I don't see anything complicated or puzzling here. It takes people a little time to appreciate fully the new and different. But the degree to which composers' innovations have been misunderstood and rejected initially has been greatly exaggerated.

"Noise and ugliness," along with other deprecatory descriptors, are hardly serious judgments. People say extremely negative, and often absurd, things in order to minimize their own inadequacies - in the case of art, their inability or unwillingness to open their sensibilities to the unfamiliar and accept innovation. Look at the crazy things composers have said about each other's music. Did Tchaikovsky really think Brahms was a "talentless b*****d"? Did Saint-Saens really think that Debussy's _L'Apres-midi d'un faune_ was not music? Even if they did, there were others at that very same moment who recognized the excellence of the works in question.

I don't know how long it took for Beethoven's late works to acquire their present prestige, but I suspect it had more to do with exposure than anything else. The late sonatas are difficult to grasp and to play, they are never tackled by most piano students, and they certainly don't sit on people's pianos alongside the "Moonlight" and "Fur Elise." But they, and the late quartets, always had their appreciators among musicians and listeners who could play and hear them properly.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Maybe Ken has some facts about this, the initial reception of op 131, who made the first suggestions appeared in print that it was something remarkable, when did it start to get performed in public concerts etc?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

I can somewhat appreciate the dreaminess of the last 2 minutes of Op.111, but I feel Beethoven takes too long doing what I consider as 'bullcrap' to get there. The boogie woogie feels a little indecent as well. Sure, it's an ok work. But I don't think Berlioz was close-minded and old-fashioned in thinking when he said Op.57 was the greatest piece of music ever written.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

starthrower said:


> Can someone please tell me what Richter set or CD this performance is from?


Wow, great performance. Never heard it before. It's available on Spotify. Can't believe it's Live, the mic must have been right in the soundboard


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Phil loves classical said:


> Wow, great performance. Never heard it before. It's available on Spotify. Can't believe it's Live, the mic must have been right in the soundboard


I thought it was the studio recording released on RCA.









Here's the NY 1960 Beethoven set.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mH0mXtxe5m_1W8ohd_JZyQq8kSEpnX9SA


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

hammeredklavier said:


> I can somewhat appreciate the dreaminess of the last 2 minutes of Op.111, but I feel Beethoven takes too long doing what I consider as 'bullcrap' to get there. The boogie woogie feels a little indecent as well. Sure, it's an ok work. But I don't think Berlioz was close-minded and old-fashioned in thinking when he said Op.57 was the greatest piece of music ever written.


"He sat on his revolving stool,... and in a few words brought to an end his lecture on why Beethoven had not written a third movement to op. 111. We had only needed, he said, to hear the piece to answer the question ourselves. A third movement? A new approach? A return after this parting - impossible! It had happened that the sonata had come, in the second, enormous movement, to an end, an end without any return. And when he said 'the sonata', he meant not only this one in C minor, but the sonata in general, as a species, as traditional art-form; it itself was here at an end, brought to its end, it had fulfilled its destiny, resolved itself, it took leave - the gesture of farewell of the D G G motif, consoled by the C sharp, was a leave-taking in this sense too, great as the whole piece itself, the farewell of the sonata form." - Extract from _Doctor Faustus_, by Thomas Mann.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I like op.111 (and Berlioz couldn't even the play the piano; what ego(ex)centrics like Berlioz or Wagner proclaimed about Beethoven is usually only interesting as information about Berlioz or Wagner and their slightly crazed states of mind, not about Beethoven...) but I have to admit that I find Th. Mann's lovingly worded bs about the piece almost as dubious as negative sophomoric comments.

Op.111 is neither Beethoven's last piece nor his greatest, so all the poetry about final farewell either to life or to the sonata etc. is just nonsense (I am not even sure if Mann might be making fun of us here, after all Kretzschmar is a rather funny figure, AFAIR but it's been almost 30 years I read that book and I should really re-read it). Even conceding (which I do not) op.111 was Beethoven's greatest piano sonata Beethoven followed it with no less than eight large scale works, all as good or better (9th symphony, Missa solemnis, Diabellis, 5 late quartets) and six of them in sonata form and none of these six ending with an explicit denial of the sonata (not even op.131 that is much further from a traditional sonata but ends with a sonata form finale, maybe the dramatic minor mode finale that apparently had become impossible in op.111).

Neither is the two movement form such a huge novelty. The closest parallel is op.90 that very similarly puts a rather laconic and dramatic sonata movement in the minor against a much slower non-sonata movement in the major. Sure, the scale is different in op.111 and the rondo in op.90 not as slow and "transcendent" as the arietta. Overall, op.111 seems more conventional to me than op.101, 109, 110 (which is not saying much, of course).


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## Livly_Station (Jan 8, 2014)

I do love Beethoven's sonatas -- especially from the Moonlight onwards --, but I also agree with the notion that they're not proper for the concert hall. Not only because they're abstract and mostly introverted, but the acoustics don't help unless it's a small intimate venue. I never understood the stubbornness of playing any piece anywhere as if the environment doesn't matter.


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## Holden4th (Jul 14, 2017)

starthrower said:


> I thought it was the studio recording released on RCA.
> 
> View attachment 127125
> 
> ...


Richter has a much better Appassionata from Moscow in 1960 and it can be heard on YT. Richter stopped playing the work not long after this, probably because he heard Gilels, also in Moscow. Both are titanic but Gilels does it better IMO.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

But Gilels' DG studio Appassionata from the early 70s has hardly anything in common with any of the white-hot Richter recordings/concerts. It's a "magisterial" slow reading, more in the Arrau camp, broadly speaking. Whatever Richter heard live from Gilels must have been quite different (unless it convinced him that he played it too wild and too fast...).


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Kreisler jr said:


> But Gilels' DG studio Appassionata from the early 70s has hardly anything in common with any of the white-hot Richter recordings/concerts. It's a "magisterial" slow reading, more in the Arrau camp, broadly speaking. Whatever Richter heard live from Gilels must have been quite different (unless it convinced him that he played it too wild and too fast...).


Try to hear this for the Beethoven and the Schumann. I think it's one of the more interesting Arrau recordings

https://pianistdiscography.com/discography/pianistLabel.php?cdnum=443


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## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

Kreisler jr said:


> Even conceding (which I do not) op.111 was Beethoven's greatest piano sonata Beethoven followed it with no less than eight large scale works, all as good or better (9th symphony, Missa solemnis, Diabellis, 5 late quartets) and six of them in sonata form and none of these six ending with an explicit denial of the sonata


I don't think the last movement of Op. 111 is about "denial". That's superimposing Mahler onto Beethoven. It's about being at peace. And yep it's one of Beethoven's greatest works.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_Anyone else find them rather abstract and think it would be hard to convey meaning in performance?_

No I think the opposite: they are easily exposed in concert or any other environment.

Unlike some of J.S. Bach's more arcane works nothing by Beethoven is particularly abstract. He always had a goal in mind -- even in his earliest harmoniemusik.

If it were true they were hard to enunciate there wouldn't be the terrific accumulation of "32"s available to us.


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## Holden4th (Jul 14, 2017)

Kreisler jr said:


> But Gilels' DG studio Appassionata from the early 70s has hardly anything in common with any of the white-hot Richter recordings/concerts. It's a "magisterial" slow reading, more in the Arrau camp, broadly speaking. Whatever Richter heard live from Gilels must have been quite different (unless it convinced him that he played it too wild and too fast...).


When you hear the Gilels from January 14 1961 compared to his DGG recording from 1973 you would be forgiven for thinking that you were listening to two different pianists. Uninhibited playing from the former that is right on the edge of going out of control in places (but never does) to what sounds like a hesitant performance and similar to Kempff. The '61 is on Youtube. You can hear it hear.






The sound quality isn't fantastic but certainly listenable. But it's the edge of the seat performance that grabs me and holds me in its sway. You'll hear so many similarities to the Richter 1960 performance. The CD is available on Brilliant Classics.


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