Pierre Boulez Saal
Violin Sonata no.1 in D major,
op.12 no.1
Violin Sonata no.2 in A major,
op.12 no.2
Violin Sonata no.3 in E-flat
major, op.12 no.3
Violin Sonata no.4 in A minor,
op.23
Pinchas Zukerman (violin)
Daniel Barenboim (piano).
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| Images: Monika Rittershaus |
Leap Day concerts do not come
around so often: every four years, in fact. With characteristic generosity,
then, the Pierre Boulez Saal offered us two. Boulez in the afternoon and
Beethoven in the evening: both, of course, great passions of Daniel Barenboim. Here
we heard the first of three concerts in which Barenboim, with his old friend
Pinchas Zukerman, performs the complete (canonical) violin sonatas. These are
works they have lived with for decades, but there was nothing routine to their
performance; we heard, rather, a freshness born of internalisation/
Where to begin? Why not at the
beginning? There was no sense whatsoever of limbering up. We began in medias res, rather as if this were a
return to the hall after an interval, surely a reflection of work as well as performance
in the case of the D major Sonata, op.12 no.1. The players’ similar, or rather
mutual, conception of phrasing, articulation, and the particular character of
early Beethoven shone through. The first movement requires space – and received
it. Its brief development section progressed with playful wonder, expanding
Haydn’s universe. There was, moreover, a fine sense of return at the dawn of
the recapitulation: a second development already, Barenboim showing all the
vigour of a thirty-year-old, yet the experience and wisdom that come with
greater years. All was founded ultimately – as ever with Barenboim’s Beethoven –
on harmony; and that was not restricted to the piano part. Barenboim presented
the second movement theme with plain-spoken integrity that truly penetrated to
the heart, in every sense, of Beethoven as artist and human being. Lyrical
violin response and combination prepared us for a set of variations that would
be far more than the sum of its parts. Harmony, once more, and an almost
effortless sublimity – the struggling Beethoven is to be found later – showed us,
even before the torrential turn to A minor, not only that this mattered, but
how and why. The rondo finale benefited from a fine degree of post-Mozartian
lilt. That syncopation did its work
harmonically as well as melodically and rhythmically, rendering such
distinctions justly meaningless. The music smiled and swaggered; again, the
distinction did not register. Above all, it had heart.
There was a similar immediacy
to the opening of op.12 no.2, albeit in a performance instantly attuned to the
work’s different character. That certainly included its A major tonality,
nodding to Mozart’s KV 526 but also to Beethoven’s own early piano sonata in
the same key, op.2 no.2. This first movement offered mischief that was never
mere licence, drama that was never mere display. Every note mattered, without
pedantry, the surprises wrought by both development and recapitulation
especially captivating. The slow movement unfolded with the dignity and depth
of a great seria aria. Here was a
pathos Mozart would surely have appreciated. The finale’s kindred yet different
syncopation (to and from its counterpart in the first sonata) benefited from
similar rhythmic buoyancy, yet also hints of something darker. Beethoven never
stands still, nor should his interpreters – which includes us as listeners. Barenboim
delivered his final, scene-stealing piano A with perfect timing and attack.
As often seems to happen when
Beethoven groups his works in threes, whether intrinsically or through our
listening expectations, there was a sense of neoclassical looking back to the
third of the op.12 sonatas, perhaps especially in its first movement. Not that
there was any doubting the composer’s voice here, in a performance boisterous,
rigorous, and lovable. Another aria for the second movement? Perhaps, but this
was also rightly taken as an opportunity to show that instruments and
instrumentalists can and will do things that the voice and singers cannot and
will not. It proved, moreover, developmental to a degree belying Beethoven’s
still relatively tender years. Barenboim’s piano bass line explained all, with
modulations to make hairs stand on end, in a performance as poised as it was
moving. An irrepressible finale became, quite rightly, more complex the more
one listened, the truest of joy to be had from counterpoint, harmony, and their
combination.
The op.23 sonata offered
something undefinably – at least beyond my powers of definition – of A minor to
its performance. It was not only its Mozartian inheritance, though that was
surely part of it. Whatever the ultimate source and nature, there was above all
a rightness to this performance, heard and communicated as if in a single,
endlessly divisible breath, grabbing one from the outset. It was a tale of
possession, intense in its fury and in its tenderness. The second movement
offered strangely restless contrast. Barenboim and Zukerman made no effort to
tone down its protean quality, nor did they exaggerate. What we heard was very
much that performing ideal, however much a construct, of letting the music ‘speak
for itself’, of Beethoven rather than his interpreters rendering Beethoven once
again strange. The finale was doubtless haunted by Mozart, yet in that also
retained its distance, haunting never being unmediated, thereby enabling
something quite different and surprising to unfold. Elements of unforced
surprise, whether one ‘knew’ they were coming or not, helped summon this
movement’s particular musical, especially formal, qualities into being. The
world of the Kreuzer Sonata felt
closer than one might have expected. To be continued, then…
