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Sonata cycle

October 30, 2009

Beethoven's "Historical Sonata Cycle" was a special highlight of the Beethovenfest 2009. In eight concerts, six interpreters played all 32 of Beethoven's piano sonatas

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Italian pianist Andrea Lucchesini
Pianist Andrea LucchesiniImage: beethovenfest.de

The first concert in the series was given by Andrea Lucchesini in the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn. The Italian pianist is not among the fortepiano specialists in the historical performance scene. For his concert, he played both on a fortepiano - a copy of an instrument built in 1824 by the piano maker Conrad Graf - and a Steinway grand. The latter was not used for Beethoven's music, but for a piano sonata by the composer Luciano Berio, who died six years ago; Lucchesini premiered the piece in Zurich in 2001.

With and Without the Fortepiano: Historical and Modern Instruments

In this concert, two different worlds of piano sound confronted each other to great effect. In the Sonata in F-sharp Major, Op. 78, Lucchesini made the fortepiano sing with his tender, expressive playing. The conductor Hans von Buelow said once of the four-bar adagio introduction to this piece: "If Beethoven had written nothing else but these four bars, he would be immortal."

The change to the Steinway grand for Berio's piano sonata came almost as a shock. New tone colors and sounds filled the room, and the volume and explosive dynamics of the modern grand piano seemed to overshadow the intimacy of the fortepiano. But this intimacy returned with Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata, the most radical and innovative work of the sonata cycle at the time of its composition. When Beethoven, by this time almost completely deaf, composed it in 1817/18, he told his pupil Carl Czerny: "I am writing a sonata that is to be my greatest." Many pianists still stand in fear of the final movement, in which Beethoven shows no consideration for the fact that a pianist has only two hands to cope with its technical demands.

Program:

Ludwig van Beethoven

Piano Sonata No. 24 in F-sharp Minor Op. 78

Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat Major Op. 106 ("Hammerklavier Sonata")

Luciano Berio

Piano Sonata

Performed by:

Andrea Lucchesini (piano, fortepiano)

Performed on September 14, 2009 in the Beethoven-Haus Bonn and recorded by Deutsche Welle.

Norbert Hornig/gz/kjb