Landscape With Mountain Lake, Morning by Caspar David Friedrich (1823-35)

Piano Sonata no.21 in C major Op.53 ‘Waldstein’ for piano (1804, Beethoven aged 33)

1 Allegro molto
2 Introduzione – Adagio molto –
3 Rondo: Allegretto moderato

Dedication Count Ferdinand Waldstein
Duration 25′

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written by Ben Hogwood

Background and Critical Reception

Beethoven’s next piano sonata was dedicated to the man who could claim to have had the greatest impact on his success as a composer – Count Ferdinand Waldstein of Bonn. What the Count made of this dedication we do not know, for he was fighting abroad at the time, but Beethoven had dedicated a remarkable new work in his favour.

It was written for a new piano – an Érard of French origin, with four pedals and an extended range. Jan Swafford gives a compelling account of how Beethoven wrote for this new instrument, ‘its action heavier and its sound bigger than the Viennese pianos he was used to.’ There were new colours to explore, and pedal effects with which to experiment, and Beethoven wasted no time, using the piano as ‘the vehicle of a heroic journey that ends in overflowing exaltation’. In this sense, the Waldstein Sonata was similar in thought to the recently premiered Eroica symphony.

The sonata, however, is a very different animal. Charles Rosen talks of ‘a characteristic sound, not only unlike the music of other composers, but unlike any other work of Beethoven, an energetic hardness, dissonant and yet curiously plain, expressive without richness.’ For Lewis Lockwood, ‘this sonata could never have been played by merely competent amateurs in Beethoven’s time. With its arrival the technical level of the piano sonata was elevated to that of the concerto.’ He equates it to Beethoven’s accomplishment for the violin in the Kreutzer sonata.

In an interview with Arcana, Angela Hewitt recognised its difficulties. “I don’t think it’s his greatest sonata but it is a wonderful performance piece when you can bring it off. If you look at every detail in it then it and want to play it well it is very difficult.”

The first movement draws attention for what Swafford terms its ‘surging and singularly pianistic dynamism’. The second movement was initially going to be a substantial Andante, but failed its initial audition with friends, who declared it too long. After a fit of pique, Beethoven reluctantly agreed and removed it, publishing it separately as the standalone Andante favori. Replacing it was a short transitional movement in the same key, a ‘short stretch of reverie and anticipation’.

The anticipation is lets loose by the finale, ‘one of the most ecstatic of all movement for piano’ in Swafford’s eyes, ‘like a gust of wind that shocks the listener into a sense of the joyous effervescence of life’. For him, the Waldstein is ‘a feat of disciplined craftsmanship that would have been practically unimaginable if he had not done it’. Here is a defining demonstration of what musical composition is about.’

Thoughts

I’m going to disagree with Angela Hewitt and declare the Waldstein as the finest sonata in Beethoven’s output thus far, in a crowded field. Even listening to it now, some 218 years after composition, its first movement has the power to make the listener sit up and take notice of its unusual writing.

For few works for piano are as immediately propulsive, and to be writing that now gives an idea of just how forward-looking this piece must have sounded to its first audience in 1804. The first movement bubbles with energy, establishing C major as the home key but with a restless gait and an unstoppable drive. Contrast that with the still second theme, a glimpse of pure light before the quickfire figures return.

The second movement Adagio is indeed a magical transition, but the finale into which it leads is brilliantly judged, ghosting in with a graceful, singing melody, the piano now sounding more orchestral in its wide range of colours and figures. Soon the energy levels of the first movement are met and surpassed, the deceptively simple melody keeping the ship on course while the torrent of water surrounds it from the other hands.

Everything here is done with a firm assurance, the composer fully confident in his processes and results. As a result the Waldstein is Beethoven’s most assured and confident pieces yet – impeccably structured, brilliantly written for the developing piano and full of challenges, not to mention thrills and spills for the audience.

Recordings used and Spotify links

You can hear clips of Angela Hewitt’s recording at the Hyperion website

You can chart the Arcana Beethoven playlist as it grows, with one recommended version of each piece we listen to. Catch up here!

Also written in 1804 Ries Piano Sonata in A minor Op.1/2

Next up Piano Sonata no.22 in F major Op.54

Evening by Caspar David Friedrich (1824)

Piano Sonata no.18 in E flat major Op.31/3 for piano (1802, Beethoven aged 31)

1. Allegro
2. Scherzetto: Allegretto vivace

3. Menuetto: Moderato e grazioso
4. Presto con fuoco

Dedication unknown
Duration 23′

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written by Ben Hogwood

Background and Critical Reception

The third of Beethoven’s Op.31 trilogy is in four movements – the last of his piano sonatas to be structured in this way. It returns to happier climes after the darkness of The Tempest, but does so in wholly original ways.

Critics are united in their praise for this work, with Jan Swafford taking up the story. ‘Beethoven begins Op.31 no.3 in E flat with a harmony so strange that it would have earned him more cries of bizarre from critics if it did not commence a work of surpassing warmth, wit and winsomeness. The beginning is an invitation, like a hand extended in friendship or love.’ The importance of positive feeling is stressed. ‘Following the scherzo, most unexpectedly, comes a graceful and lyrical minuet – he wanted no slow movement to trouble the warm weather of this sonata. For conclusion, a tarantella marked Presto con fuoco, with the fire appropriate to that old whirling dance in which, once upon a time, you hoped to survive the bite of the tarantula by dancing to exhaustion.’

For Sir András Schiff, ‘the third sonata, in E flat major, is probably the hardest one to paraphrase in words: on the one hand it seems tender, entreating and pleading, with a lyrical basic mood strongly in evidence; and on the other hand, in the scherzo and finale it maintains a high spirited and urgent sense of motion.’

The nature of the finale earned the sonata a nickname of The Hunt in some quarters – and many admirers, including Angela Hewitt, who found that ‘Beethoven is in his element, for sure’.

Thoughts

Op.31/3 starts with a gentle question; a chord that is the musical equivalent of a bird unexpectedly landing on a small branch. It is the most unusual beginning to a sonata yet, and opens up a beautifully paced story, Beethoven’s invention bubbling up and down the keyboard. The chord itself is the sort you could easily play over and over again on the piano, creating an oasis of calm and positivity.

After this fascinating and elusive first movement, Beethoven has fun with the martial rhythms of the second. Back in A flat major, this is far removed from the stillness of the Pathétique slow movement, with the composer intent on making his audience smile and jump with the suddenly loud interjections. As a complement, a softer side in the form of a charming minuet, flowing nicely but with just a touch of shade in the form of some unusual harmonies – Beethoven’s second theme has a slight shiver running through it.

The last movement is a canter – as Angela Hewitt says, a bit fast for a hunt, but with a galloping gait. Beethoven builds up terrific momentum here, and some of the bigger chords would surely have been stretching the pianos of the day. The good feeling is irrepressible, in complete contrast to the end of the Tempest, and the sonata finishes with a winning flourish. Beethoven’s strength of feeling wins the day.

Recordings used and Spotify links

You can hear clips of Hewitt’s recording at the Hyperion website

You can chart the Arcana Beethoven playlist as it grows, with one recommended version of each piece we listen to. Catch up here!

Also written in 1802 Hummel Piano Quintet in E flat major Op.87

Next up 6 Variations in F major Op.34

Walk at Dusk (Man Contemplating a Megalith), possibly a self-portrait by Caspar David Friedrich (1837-40)

Piano Sonata no.17 in D minor Op.31/2 ‘The Tempest’ for piano (1802, Beethoven aged 31)

1. Largo – Allegro
2. Adagio
3. Allegretto

Dedication unknown
Duration 23′

Listen

written by Ben Hogwood

Background and Critical Reception

As we have previously considered, the Op.31 sonatas were composed in the year of Beethoven’s Heiligenstadt Testament, written on 6 October 1802. In this landmark letter to his brothers, which was left unsent, he revealed the full torment of his encroaching deafness – and while nobody would guess Beethoven’s fate from the first or last in the Op.31 set of his troubles, they could be left in no doubt by the second.

Its nickname of The Tempest could well be spurious, for it was applied after Anton Schindler recounted a conversation asking the composer what the piece was about, whereupon Beethoven supposedly said, ‘Read Shakespeare’s Tempest!’

Angela Hewitt, in the booklet notes accompanying her Hyperion recordings of the sonatas, gives a heartfelt appraisal of the sonata, noting its quote in the first movement of the aria Es ist vollbracht from J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion, and also the similarity of the last few bars to the rumbling of distant thunder, a quality identified by Beethoven’s friend Carl Czerny.

Hewitt takes in ‘one of Beethoven’s most glorious slow movements’, with a dolce melody that proves ‘heartbreaking in its eloquent simplicity’. In the third movement, ‘the tragic feeling continues right to the end, with the music disappearing into the void.’

Thoughts

This sonata is both dramatic and tragic – the opposite of its predecessor in G major. From the beginning it has a heavy heart, and a tendency to lean on dissonances in a way that somehow anticipates the music of Janáček, still some 120 years away.

The first movement paints a dark picture, with a lot of the action lower down in the piano. Ominous rumblings and angular lines are the order of the day, and as the development of these ideas progresses the music almost stops, enfolded in its own mystery. Suddenly a bolt of lightning thunders down, the listener jolted back to an awful reality.

After the fire and brimstone of the first movement, the second is calmer but not necessarily consoling. The intensity is still present in Beethoven’s thoughts, now presented in a measured way. Again the composer’s use of silence is telling, as is the time given to the lower end of the piano once again.

The finale shifts up towards the higher register but stays resolutely in D minor. It retains the powerful expression of the first two movements, but stays in semiquavers the whole way through, meaning the tension never lets up. Just on the approach to the recap of the main theme the music adopts a rocking motion, before subsiding to a quiet, thoughtful end. There is no major key happiness to be had here.

This must surely be the lowest piano sonata to have been written by 1802, and would have had an enormous impact on early audiences. In the knowledge of Beethoven’s realisation of his deafness it is convenient to link the Tempest sonata to the anguish he must have felt, but it really does feel like a pure expression of pain and loss. The piano sonata as Beethoven would have known it was breaking new grounds.

Recordings used and Spotify links

You can hear clips of Hewitt’s recording at the Hyperion website

You can chart the Arcana Beethoven playlist as it grows, with one recommended version of each piece we listen to. Catch up here!

Also written in 1802 Haydn Harmoniemesse

Next up Piano Sonata no.18 in E flat major Op.31/3