# Bethoven's Moonlight 1st mvt.



## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Instead of really finding by myself out I'll make a new thread here on TC...I'm trying to record Tarrega's transcription on guitar. I've done many takes now and always end up playing different tempos. From 6 minutes 8 seconds to 7,28! My go to version on piano (Garrick Ohlsson) is 6,54. It's a nice challenge to keep the tempo down and I sometimes obviously fall asleep. I guess this is a rubato fantasy. Do you guys have any thoughts on the piece? I thought I'd get really fed up on it, but I want to understand how to do rubato in a more controlled way...
ok, I'll find out myself.

sorry to write Bethoven, I rushed the tempo.
it should be Beeethoven.


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## Andrew Kenneth (Feb 17, 2018)

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> It's a nice challenge to keep the tempo down and I sometimes obviously fall asleep.


It can be argued that this sonata is mostly performed too slow.

Artur Schnabel's classic 1930's recording of this movement clocks in at 4 min 50 s. 
(Schnabel's piano teacher was Theodor Leschetizky, a pupil of Carl Czerny. Beethoven was Czerny's piano teacher.)






A more recent rendition by HJ Lim shows the influence of Schnabel.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I was surprised a bit that I liked it at Schnabel's tempo  I can try that. I already made my slow version...


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## chesapeake bay (Aug 3, 2015)

I haven't delved into this lately but I think Beethoven noted that the bass sustain should be maintained throughout. Of course theres the forte piano vs modern piano debate but you would need to play it a bit slower to avoid to much dissonance. Moravec plays it this way and his clocks in at 6:43.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

I think it needs to be taken at a fairly brisk tempo, otherwise I get bored real quick. "Adagio sostenuto" just means "slow and sustained," not "lethargic and soporific." I like to emphasize the first note in each group of 3 to bring out the main, haunting, cantabile melody with the other two notes in the groups as a rocking accompaniment. Though people think of it as an easy piece since virtually every piano student has played it, it requires a bit of interpretive imagination to keep it from getting monotonous.


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

If you listen to Andras Schiff's lecture on the sonata it should help you to understand the 1st movement better. For example, Schiff explains that it was never titled the "moonlight" sonata by Beethoven, and that the tempo for the 1st movement should not be played as slowly as it often gets played, etc.:






Schiff's idea that Beethoven was thinking about Mozart's Don Giovanni & that the 1st movement is a death or funeral scene--which he got from reading pianist Edwin Fischer's book on Beethoven's piano sonatas--is interesting. There does appear to be a connection between the passage that Beethoven sketched out from Don Giovanni and the 1st movement of this sonata, as Schiff illustrates. However, I hear more of a sense of yearning in the faster tempo. To my ears, the music is more about love, or rather the suppression of love, rather than death. I hear something more impetuous in the quicker tempo, like a heart that is beating slightly faster.

We know that Beethoven dedicated the sonata to Giulietta Guicciardi, who has been suggested as a possible candidate for his "immortal beloved". Indeed, some scholars have suggested that Beethoven may have become infatuated with Guilietta when he gave her piano lessons in 1801. However, at the time, Beethoven was more intimate with Guilietta's cousins, Therese and Josephine Brunsvik, who he had taught since 1799, and the evidence suggests that Josephine was his "immortal beloved" or "only beloved"--as he called her in his letters, & therefore, presumably she, & not Guiletta, was on his mind when he wrote the passionate 1st movement of this sonata, despite its dedication to her cousin.

Alfred Brendel's interpretation (from his 2nd Philips cycle) is a bit slower than Schiff's, but Brendel makes good sense of the tempo and the meaning that I believe Beethoven intended here. Like Schiff, he doesn't appear to subscribe to the notion that this music portrays a slow "moon lit" scene, either:


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Andrew Kenneth said:


> It can be argued that this sonata is mostly performed too slow.
> 
> Artur Schnabel's classic 1930's recording of this movement clocks in at 4 min 50 s.
> (Schnabel's piano teacher was Theodor Leschetizky, a pupil of Carl Czerny. Beethoven was Czerny's piano teacher.)
> ...


I like the tempo of Schnabel and the expressiveness of Lim.

Actually, I think Arrau nailed it.






.

.

But THIS one gets a gold star.


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## Guest (Apr 10, 2020)

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Instead of really finding by myself out I'll make a new thread here on TC...I'm trying to record Tarrega's transcription on guitar.


I mostly play guitar, but I dabble on the piano. That piece is considerably easier to play on the piano than on the guitar, and you don't have to make any compromises! Anyway, I like Arrau's version very much. So much pathos.


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## The3Bs (Apr 1, 2020)

For a Moonlight 1st mvmt that is "slow and sustained" but also moving forward nicely we have also Maria João Pires...






Her interpretation comes in at 5min 27s... so not as fast as Schnabel but she manages a very nice tempo


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