Grosses Festspielhaus
Beethoven – Piano Sonata no.17
in D minor, op.31 no.2, ‘The Tempest’
Schoenberg – Three Piano
Pieces, op.11Schoenberg – Six Little Piano Pieces, op.19
Beethoven – Piano Sonata no.24 in F-sharp major, op.78
Beethoven – Piano Sonata no.23 in F minor, op.57, ‘Appassionata’
Maurizio Pollini (piano)
Sometimes, I wish Maurizio
Pollini would play music by Schoenberg in every recital. The composer,
astonishingly, still seems to need such advocacy, at least with the general
musical public, whatever that might be. But then, sometimes I wish he would
play Beethoven in every recital. Or Chopin. And so on. A Pollini recital
remains one of the great musical events in any concert-goer’s year; this
Salzburg concert was no exception.
Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata was the opening work. If I were to be hyper-critical
– and, if I am honest, find a cavil for the sake of finding a cavil – there were
in the first movement a couple of occasions on which some, though not necessarily
I, might have found Pollini’s tone a little dry (actually closer to the sound
one sometimes hears on some of his DG recordings). But I shall waste no more
time as an unconvincing Devil’s Advocate: from those extraordinary Largo opening bars to the end of the
finale, this was as compelling a performance as I have heard, one that took one
by the scruff of the neck and never let one go, although in no sense brutal.
There is so much to be said in those opening bars, still more to be said in
what comes from them, and in how that comes from them. The
endlessly — and ever-controversially — analysed first movement of Beethoven’s D
minor piano sonata, Op. 31 no. 2, the so-called Tempest, may be a more apposite model here than that of the Ninth
Symphony. As Carl Dahlhaus once put it, ‘By the criteria of Italo-French music,
Beethoven’s movement does not have the slightest claim to a musical idea worthy
of the name.’ Leaving on one side, the generalisation regarding other music, we
can still assent to the ‘German’ organicism of both work and performance. ‘What
his work is based on,’ Dahlhaus continued, ‘is not a thematic — much less
melodic — “inspiration” so much as a formal concept: the arpeggiated triad …
The opening, seemingly an introduction, can be viewed in retrospect as an
exposition.’ And that is how we heard it: almost an instantiation of an endless
dialectical process, albeit one in which both composer and pianist intensified
the complexity by necessarily yet meaningfully calling time, in more sense than
one. The demands of Beethovenian sonata form are not identical with those of,
say, Boulez’s serial proliferation. ‘If one extreme of music is the melodic “inspiration”,
Dahlhaus went on, quoting as an example a cavatina from Les Huguenots, ‘limited to a few measures and with the form
functioning merely as an arrangement, the other would seem to be the almost
disembodied formal process emerging from a void.’ Indeed – and with what drama
that emerged, albeit embodied rather than ‘disembodied’ in the heroism of
performance. The occasional, very occasional, blurring – as so often, Pollini’s
tempo was fast indeed – would doubtless be seized upon by his detractors as
evidence of ‘failing technique’; they seem to want to have it both ways,
elsewhere referring to elevation of ‘technique’ over ‘emotion’, as if the two
might be separated. For the rest of us, it was a white-knuckle ride, all the
more so, since it was of the mind as much as the body (as if the two, etc. …). The
Adagio struck just the right balance
between sublimity – hard to define, though one knows it when one hears it, and
surely not unrelated to exquisite, apparently obvious voicing – and something
more earthy. Schumann and Chopin came to mind more than once in the sonorities
teased from the piano in the finale, but as an extension of Beethoven, not in
opposition to him.
For there is more to be heard in such a
performance, let alone such a work, than can ever be dreamed of by the Beckmessers
of this world. Whatever their protests, ‘Beethoven Hero’ is far from dead. So
we heard in the other two Beethoven sonatas: the Appassionata of course, but also, in more playful yet ultimately no
less serious mode, the wonderful F-sharp major sonata, op.78. Again, there was ‘slow
movement sublimity’, albeit ever so briefly, in the opening of the first movement;
again, the main Allegro section (here
with the rider, certainly observed, ma
non troppo) emerged from within, both negating and ultimately sublating the
initial material. Variegated tone and the subtlest of agogic touches showed
Beethoven’s wilful yet winning humour at something approaching it greatest.
Pollini’s reading of the Appassionata Sonata, and the first
movement in particular, was all the more powerful for its (admittedly
predictable) eschewal of ‘mere’ rhetoric. There was, quite rightly, no
distinction to be made – or at least this is how it seemed – between material
and its dynamic expression, whether in the score or in the concert hall.
Especially noteworthy was the difference in colour – whether through touch,
weighting, dynamic contrast, and/or who knows? – so powerfully, meaningfully
communicated in different tonal areas and the transitions between them. Andante con moto seemed spot on for what
we heard in the second movement. Variations unfolded of necessity, but also of
will; there was a beating heart at, well, the heart of this performance. The
finale swept all before it: a cliché, I know, but words tend to be
insufficient. Alas, they are all I have, at least here. Middle-period Beethoven
needs no vindication, but even for those who might think the work too ‘familiar’,
it could hardly have sounded so on this occasion.
The Schoenberg performances were no
less fine. Op.11 was haunted by the motivic ghost of Brahms; how could it not
be? But in context, it seemed equally haunted by the ghost of Beethovenian
tonal processes. D minor – that most ‘Second Viennese School’ of keys – seemed resurrected
from The Tempest, flayed, suspended:
all of those things and more. Schoenberg’s instantly familiar piano sound
spoke, or rather sang. For both the longer pieces of op.11 and the aphoristic
pieces of op.19 had something more than usually vocal to them: It was not just
the voicing of lines, which again occasionally seemed to have a little Chopin
to it. (I thought also of the ‘Valse de Chopin’ in Pierrot lunaire, shortly to come.) That was certainly important,
but so too was the ability to understand and to communicate each piece as if in
a single breath. Op.19 no.1 sounded as if a slightly extended operatic sigh – a
warning, perhaps, to Dahlhaus’s (too?) ready opposition of German and ‘Italo-French’,
Debussy appearing too – if not as an influence, then perhaps as a cousin. The
Mahlerian bells of the closing op.19 piece sounded as if without hammers, both
heavy with mourning and light with the air of another planet. Now some later
Schoenberg too, please! In the meantime, though, we had – as I suspected – two exquisite
Beethoven Bagatelles as encores: op.119 nos 3 and 4. Their kinship (no.3 in
particular) with Schoenberg’s piano pieces has never sounded so apparent:
again, as if in a single, profound breath.
