Lessons From Beethoven and Life, 9th symphony, & posthumorous fame

Lessons From Beethoven and Life, 9th symphony, & posthumorous fame | Nov 01 2007

--For those of you into music, I'd like to hear your comment.

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Lessons From Beethoven and Life
By STUART ISACOFF

NEW YORK -- Beethoven is forever contemporary. In his own time, he pushed artistic boundaries so far that the formidable pianist and composer Muzio Clementi once asked him if he really considered a set of string quartets to be "music." "Oh," replied the indomitable composer casually, "they are not for you, but for a later age."

That story appears in Donald Grout's classic, "A History of Western Music." It has been told in several versions, but the theme rings true. Like Shakespeare, Beethoven continually opens a curtain on the modern soul: its struggles, dreams, and incongruities.

Thus bringing Beethoven's musical vision to life is not a task for the inexperienced. That's why pianist Andras Schiff, whose stellar reputation was forged on masterly interpretations of Bach, Scarlatti, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann and others, waited until now, at age 53, to embark on his complete cycle of all 32 Beethoven sonatas, played chronologically in small groups throughout the year at recitals planned in Ann Arbor, Mich., San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. As the program unfolds, the ECM label is releasing the repertoire on discs.

The recital at Carnegie Hall last Wednesday evening -- which included the three sonatas of Opus 10 and the famous Opus 13 "Pathetique" Sonata -- was truly remarkable. The piano, as it thundered and whispered and managed endless shades in between, probed to the very heart of Beethoven: his tenderness, humor, desolation and rage. Naughty rhythmic syncopations stuck their tongues out at you. Passages that drove onward like pistons in a great transparent engine were interrupted by frightening silences. The performance was musically stunning.

"It was quite deliberate to leave Beethoven for now," he told me recently. "I find him the most versatile and complex of the composers I've played. Performing all the sonatas is indeed similar to an actor taking on all the male roles in Shakespeare. But it goes beyond that. I would include the sonnets of Shakespeare as well, because there are also very personal, intimate pieces.

"There can be a born Mozart interpreter, or a born Schubert interpreter," he continued. "But in my mind there is no such thing as a born Beethoven interpreter -- you have to learn how to approach this work, and much of that comes from life's lessons. Mozart is not really human: He's superhuman. Beethoven is one of us -- but the best of us."

Mr. Schiff had played some of these sonatas all his life. But learning the entire set was an adventure. Along with the scores, he studied the composer's conversation books, letters, manuscripts and first editions. "Luckily, we know a lot more about Beethoven than we know about Bach," he explains. "His life is documented because of his loss of hearing -- so much of it is actually written down. He was a deeply cultured person who read a lot and was very passionate about Shakespeare. He respected Goethe and Schiller, and loved Greek and Latin literature and art. So you have to follow him there. These all offer clues. Yet, each of us still has to come up with our own solutions when interpreting the music. If the D Minor Sonata is connected with Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' -- after which it was named -- well, you can read 'The Tempest,' but you still have to figure out what the music really means. I find that Prospero's monologues give me an inspiration about how to play the recitatives [music that follows the rhythms of ordinary speech] in the first movement."

In researching this repertoire, the pianist experimented with earlier types of pianos -- the rather more delicate instruments that Beethoven played on. "The sound of modern instruments is evened out from top to bottom," he reports. "Early instruments have distinct registers that don't sound remotely similar to each other. In that era, the composers wrote with this concept in mind. When Beethoven asks us to play on 'one string,' then on 'two strings,' then on 'three strings,' that is a change of sound that is totally alien to contemporary instruments. Also, the bass strings on an 18th-century or 19th-century piano are much thinner than the ones we use today, and even if you play with full force on those earlier versions of the piano, the bass is never going to overpower the rest. So one has to do a lot of rethinking and retouching to play this music on a modern instrument.

"Actually, in an ideal world, you would need almost as many pianos as there are Beethoven sonatas -- that's an exaggeration, but it's wonderful to have variety. As a rule, I protest vehemently against sameness, whether it is in music, our eating habits or our clothing."

Indeed, having been born in Hungary in 1953, this émigré to the West is acutely aware of the value of freedom. This may account, in part, for his growing sense of kinship with Beethoven -- a composer who practically lived to defy limits. "It's interesting that Beethoven, after the deterioration of his hearing, turned an obstacle into a virtue," says Mr. Schiff. "He was hearing sonorities in his mind that the instruments of the day -- and even the instruments of today -- are not able to produce. Over and over again, he asks us to make a crescendo on a sustained note, which is impossible. And yet he asks for it. His imagination transcends the limitations of the instrument. He does this in the symphonies and quartets as well. It's characteristic of his thinking."

One can find a striving to express things in a new way throughout Beethoven's life. This shows up particularly in the sonatas as they progress over the years, reports Mr. Schiff. That is why he performs them for audiences in chronological order. Yet, even the most familiar works can hold surprises.

"Consider the so-called 'Moonlight Sonata,' " he says. "Beethoven never called it that, and the popularity of this piece actually irritated him. He thought his F Sharp Major Sonata was better, but it was not embraced in the same way. I hate the name myself -- it's a kitsch name. However, this is a fantastic sonata. The first movement is playable by amateurs, but they tend to think of 'moonlight' instead of actually reading the score, in which Beethoven asks the player to hold down the pedal for the entire movement. Most players ignore this, saying it is not practical on today's instruments. But they never really give it a try. Beethoven was inventing sounds and sonorities that no one thought of before. Using the pedal -- raising the dampers so that the strings continue to vibrate -- allows sounds that do not traditionally belong together to blend into a cloud. He's going against the textbook."

There are other wonderful discoveries to be shared. In one of the last sonatas, Opus 110, Beethoven quotes a lament from Bach's "St. John Passion" -- sung at the moment when Christ dies -- as well as two folk songs: "Our Cat Had Kittens" and "I Am Down and Out." Once again, the composer combines the sacred and the earthly in one artistic statement. And of a famous line written in the score of this sonata -- "Must it be? It must be!" -- Mr. Schiff comments that it was not, as is often assumed, a profound existential question being asked by the composer, but rather a message to his publisher, who owed Beethoven money. "Must it be? Yes, you have to pay!"

Mr. Schiff admires some of the great Beethoven interpreters of the past -- especially Edwin Fischer, Arthur Schnabel and Rudolf Serkin -- but he is, by now, on a musical path of his own making, in a continuing process of evolution. "I learn new things all the time," he reveals. "I may not change something consciously, but life changes it, time changes it. Sometimes I come back to a piece after a rest and find that something I never noticed before now seems so obvious and logical." Which is what makes attending a recital by this eloquent, impeccable musician so endlessly exciting.

Mr. Isacoff is the author of "Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization" and editor of Piano Today magazine.