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Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonatas No. 8, 14, 17, 21, 23, 29

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s

Artist: Ludwig van Beethoven
Title: Piano Sonatas No. 8, 14, 17, 21, 23, 29
Released: 1980
Label: Teldec Classaics
Time: 76:20 / 67:04
Producer(s):
Appears with:
Category: Classic
Rating: ********.. (8/10)
Media type: CD double
Purchase date:  2001.11.26
Price in €: 10,83
Web address: www.teldec.com

 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


Disc: 1
[1] Piano Sonata No.8, Op.13, in c 'Pathetique': Grave - Allegro Di Molto Mineur - 8:48
[2] Piano Sonata No.8, Op.13, in c 'Pathetique': Adagio Cantabile - 5:42
[3] Piano Sonata No.8, Op.13, in c 'Pathetique': Rondo: Allegro - 4:22
[4] Piano Sonata No.14 in c#, Op.27, No.2 'Moonlight': Adagio Sostenuto - 4:46
[5] Piano Sonata No.14 in c#, Op.27, No.2 'Moonlight': Allegretto - 1:53
[6] Piano Sonata No.14 in c#, Op.27, No.2 'Moonlight': Presto Agitato - 6:59
[7] Piano Sonata No.17 in d, Op.31, No.2 'Tempest': Largo - Allegro - 8:28
[8] Piano Sonata No.17 in d, Op.31, No.2 'Tempest': Adagio - 7:11
[9] Piano Sonata No.17 in d, Op.31, No.2 'Tempest': Allegretto - 5:50
[10] Piano Sonata No.21, Op.53, in C: Allegro Con Brio - 9:16
[11] Piano Sonata No.21, Op.53, in C: Intro: Adagio Molto - 3:37
[12] Piano Sonata No.21, Op.53, in C: Rondo: Allegretto Moderato - 8:58

Disc: 2
[1] Piano Sonata No.23, in f, Op.57 'Appassionata': Allegro Assai - Piu Allegro - 8:37
[2] Piano Sonata No.23, in f, Op.57 'Appassionata': Andante Con Moto - 4:59
[3] Piano Sonata No.23, in f, Op.57 'Appassionata': Allegro Ma Non Troppo - Presto - 7:32
[4] Piano Sonata No.29 in B flat, Op.106 'Grobe Son Fur Das Hammerklavier': Allegro - 10:27
[5] Piano Sonata No.29 in B flat, Op.106 'Grobe Son Fur Das Hammerklavier': Scherzo: Assai Vivace - 2:17
[6] Piano Sonata No.29 in B flat, Op.106 'Grobe Son Fur Das Hammerklavier': Adagio Sostenuto - Appasionato e con molto sentimento - 20:33
[7] Piano Sonata No.29 in B flat, Op.106 'Grobe Son Fur Das Hammerklavier': Largo - Allegro - Allegro risoluto] - 12:24

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


RUDOLF BUCHBINDER - Piano

HANS-BERNHARD BÄTZING - Executive Producer
WOLFGANG MOHR - Executive Producer
EVA RISINGER - Liner Notes

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


On why Beethoven elicits such apparently ineffable feelings

I believe Rudy Buchbinder to be one of the best Beethoven piano sonatas performers I have ever heard, mostly because he understands and transmits the ineffable feelings mentioned above.

As a matter of fact these conceptualizations came to me a propos of one the sonatas: No. 21 Op. 53, in C major, called "Waldstein". I haste to assert that everything I elaborate on Op. 53 applies perfectly well to the other sonatas in Buchbinder's album. I could have unfathomed the same conclusions starting from the Pathétique or the Hammerklavier, or Les Adieux. Simply because Buchbinder places the ineffable in front and never parts with it: that makes it so special and enthralling.

Upon listening to the Waldstein, I realized that the virtuosic demands and the novelty of the style of writing in op. 53 serve the purpose of spawning an aural imagination of extraordinary originality and freshness. (Perhaps that is why the French prefer to call op. 53 L'Aurore, and the Italians "Aurora" [Dawn]).

This sonata impacts on what we might call our system of intermodal or amodal perception. It intensely evokes play of colours, surfaces, textures, and so on that go far beyond the world of sound.



Amodal perception

Old Bertrand Russell's intimation that the perceptual ways were inextricably intertwined before birth (The Analysis of Matter, 1919), appeared enhanced from the empirical corroboration that infants are capable to connect experiences so that they recognize that something seen, heard and touched may in fact be the same thing.

Modern research shows that infants experience a world of perceptual unity, in which they can perceive amodal qualities in any modality (hearing, touch, sight, kinesthesia, cynesthesia, and so on) from any form of human expressive behaviours. represent these qualities abstractally, and then transpose them to other modalities.

Music is endowed with an ideal modality to convey qualities of emotion and cognition that they would otherwise prove elusive: these elusive qualities are better captured by dynamic, kinetic terms, such as "surging", "fading away", "fleeting", "explosive", "crescendo", " decrescendo", "bursting", "drawn out", and so on.

The philosopher Suzanne Langer insisted that in any experience-near psychology, close attention must be paid to the many "forms of feeling" inextricably involved with al the vital processes of life, such as breathing, getting hungry, falling asleep and emerging out of sleep, or feeling the coming and going of emotions and thoughts.

Needless to say, what was first found in infants was later recognized in a variety of complex perceptual experiences in adults.

Buchbinder's rendition of Beethoven's op. 53 piano sonata (as well as the other sonatas) proves an outstanding case in point for amodal perception. Sometimes, we may feel our chest broaden, our breath galloping heavily, a sudden state of tenderness that loosens our muscle tone, the smoothness or roughness of the sounds of music on our skins, an so on.

Buchbinder explores this totally unconscious world which evokes colours, surfaces, coverings and thickenings in the world of sound and beyond, in our amodal world.

The first idea of the Allegro con brio seems to grow out of an aural inspiration undissolubly associated with tonal instability: its shattering novelty, derived from the throbbing of repeated chords, darting phrases in the high register, and dynamic contrasts produce an effect as though letting the a blinding flash of light arise from the sonorities of the opening pianissimo. This passage is also marked by tonal instability, delaying until bar 14 an unqualified affirmation of the tonic of C major, which up to then has the status of a continually debated hypothesis.

The first movement of op. 53 explores tonal relationships that are unusual for Beethoven: as in the sonata op. 31 no. 1, the second theme appears in the mediant, E major (and in the recapitulation, it will return in A major before moving to C major). This choice of key sets into relief the liminous songfulness, the gentle, almost choral-like flow of the second theme, and the very neat contrast it makes with the previous theme: a contrast, that is, incidentally, mitigated by the presence of recognizable common elements in the material of the exposition (for example, simple scale fragments occur in both the first and second theme).

The second movement -I will not even enter into the issue of the Andante Favori- is a brief (28 bars) Introduction (Adagio molto) to the finales. These 28 bars constitute a moment of meditative self absorption -whose intensity would not be out place in the last sonatas: a sort of rising arc, a slow ascent, as it were, towards a realm of song- is traced three times in succession; it eventually reaches its destination, the glowing theme of the final Rondo.

A most original Rondo, indeed, because of the exceptional importance of tone colours, and the use of the pedal which often produces cloudy sonorities that almost anticipate Debussy, and there are other aspects of pianistic writing that produce unusual timbres, for example, the trills that lend a special luminosity to the appearances of the rondo theme in the high register.

Juan Carlos Garelli from Buenos Aires, City of Buenos Aires, Argentina, September 29, 2001
  

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