Beethoven 32 – Over the year 2020, I will be learning and filming all 32 Beethoven sonatas. Subscribe to this channel to follow the project, and visit [ Ссылка ] for blog posts and listening guides to each sonata.

C minor: by far the most iconic Beethoven key. It's the key of the Fifth Symphony, the Third Piano Concerto, the Coriolan Overture, the Pathétique, etc., etc. – so much, in fact, that 'C minor mood' became a semi-official term in Beethoven literature. It's temptingly easy for us to connect the brooding scowl on Beethoven's portraits and busts to the dramatic, stormy, high-intensity music he wrote in this key: works full of deep pathos and possessed by a relentless, sometimes demonic drive.

It's also temptingly easy to compare the C minor sonata, Op. 10 No. 1, with its younger sister, the Pathétique, Op. 13. The two are but a year or two apart and have a similar structure: a lyrical slow movement in A-flat major surrounded by an energetic first movement and finale. Perhaps, though, dubbing Op. 10 No. 1 'the small Pathétique' isn't that helpful. The earlier sonata may not possess the same catchiness or plumb the depths of human emotion to the same degree as Op. 13, but surely it has more than enough individuality to be loved for what it is, and not just as a precursor to a later work.

The heart of the sonata for me is its middle movement (6:20): a slowly unfolding soliloquy, gently glowing, suspended in a timeless world. There is a dreamily loving quality to the static opening, which Beethoven animates with ornaments or injects with short outbursts of passion, only to bring it back time and again to a magical standstill (try 7:57!). A development would upset this idyllic world, and Beethoven reduces it to a single chord (9:21) linking back to the reprise. A third repeat of the theme (12:36) turns into a coda, closing the movement (and perhaps one's eyes) with a a contented weariness of limb.

To counterbalance this immense tranquility, Beethoven infuses the outer movements with heaps of energy. The jagged, nervous impetus of the first movement's opening belies the lyrical, heartfelt or light-spirited music which makes up most of it. Only towards the end (from 5:25) do darkness and passion prevail. The finale (14:06) – one of the few 'prestissimo' movements Beethoven wrote – starts as a tautly wound spring, soon to explode with thundering passages. Everything is small-scale, with abrupt mood shifts between the sharply defined sections. The second theme is unexpectedly humorous, and just as unexpected are the premonition of the famous fate motif in the super-short development (16:19 – the 5th Symphony for a moment!) and the ending, which includes a visit to the relatively distant key of D-flat major (17:37), a spooky atmospheric arpeggio (17:55), and which finally evaporates in a curious C major, leaving an ambiguous, unnerving afterimage.

Boris Giltburg, piano

Filmed by Stewart French
© 2020 Fly On The Wall, London ([ Ссылка ])
Filmed at @FazioliPianos Concert Hall, Sacile, Italy

свернуть