CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Leon Fleisher Young Artists Concert

Weill Recital Hall
Saturday, January 19th, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Adam Golka, Piano
Renana Gutman, Piano
Lura Johnson, Piano
Yury Shadrin, Piano

BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 17 in D Minor, Op. 31, No. 2
BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 23 in F Minor "Appassionata"
BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 11 in B-flat Major, Op. 22
BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, Op. 110

Programs of The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall are generously supported by the City of New York: Office of the Mayor, the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York City Council; and by the New York State Council on the Arts.

Program Notes:

BY WILLIAM KINDERMAN

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, Op. 110
Baptized December 17, 1770, in Bonn, Germany; died March 26, 1827, in Vienna.

Written in 1821–22, Beethoven’s Sonata No. 31 received its Carnegie Hall premiere on March 25, 1893, in a performance by Ignacy Jan Paderewski.

On December 6, 1821, Beethoven wrote a moving dedication of the E-Major Sonata, Op. 109, to Maximiliana Brentano, daughter of Antonia Brentano, the most likely intended recipient of his 1812 letter to the “Immortal Beloved.” In the dedication, the composer describes his spiritual bond to the Brentano family as something that “can never be destroyed by time,” and he recaptures his own fond memories of shared experiences from a decade earlier. Beethoven had just rebounded from a dismal period of illness, which delayed his completion of his sonata trilogy, Opp. 109–111. His recovery sparked his sense of humor and his creative forces, resulting in the genesis of the remarkable Sonata in A-flat Major, Op. 110.

Humor is abundantly evident in the middle movement of Op. 110, which serves as a scherzo in form and character, although it bears only the tempo designation Allegro molto in 2/4 meter. Beethoven alludes to two popular songs—”Our cat has had kittens” and “I’m dissolute, you’re dissolute”—in the main section of this movement.

Wrapped around this comic Allegro molto are movements of reflective and even transcendental character. They are connected through a network of thematic anticipations and reminiscences—a network no less concentrated here than in the Ninth Symphony. As in the Ninth, Beethoven incorporates a transition utilizing recitative at the threshold of the finale. The counterpart here to the “Joy” theme of the Ninth Symphony is the lyrical fugue subject, especially in its closing apotheosis, which acts both as an alternative to the mournful Arioso dolente and as the goal of various foreshadowings heard since the beginning of the work. The opening measures of the first movement, for instance, display an audible affinity with the fugue subject of the finale.

The weighty finale contains a twofold pairing of the despairing arioso and consoling fugue. The first fugue proves unable to be sustained, but the quiet return of the fugue, una corda and in inversion, leads through complex transformational passages to reach the ecstatic culmination of the whole work. Donald Francis Tovey claimed that in this closing fugue Beethoven eschewed an “organlike climax” with its ascetic connotations as a “negation of the world”: “Like all Beethoven’s visions, this fugue absorbs and transcends the world.” It is significant in this regard that the transitional double-diminution passage recalls the earlier comic allusion in the Allegro molto. A connection between the beginning of the Meno allegro and the song “I’m dissolute” is suggested by rhythmic and registral correspondence, reinforcing the sense of an absorption of the “world.” The import of Beethoven’s inscription “nach und nach wieder auflebend” (“gradually returning to life”) is symbolized in this passage. The abstract contrapuntal
matrix beginning with the inverted subject is infused with a new energy, which arises not naturally through traditional fugal procedures, but only through an exertion of will that strains those processes to their limits.

The rhythmic developments that point the way out of Beethoven’s fugal labyrinth thus distort the subject, compressing it almost beyond recognition, while simultaneously opening a means of connection with the earlier movements. The entry of the original subject in A-flat major is accompanied by shimmering 16th notes continuing the texture of double diminution, giving the effect of the theme being glorified by its own
substance. The transition from the darkness and pessimism of the Arioso dolente is now fully accomplished; and in the final moments Beethoven extends the fugal subject melodically into the high register before it is emphatically resolved, once and for all, into the closing A-flat major sonority. This structural downbeat represents a goal toward which the whole work seems to have aspired.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57, “Appassionata”
Written in 1804–05, Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata received its Carnegie Hall premiere in the Recital Hall (now Zankel Hall) on April 24, 1891, in a performance by Leopold Godowsky.

Donald Francis Tovey once observed that the Sonata in F Minor, Op. 57, is Beethoven’s only work to maintain a tragic solemnity throughout all its movements. The title “Appassionata,” though not from Beethoven, is not inappropriate; still, Czerny was surely correct in observing that the work is “much too magnificent” for its title. In its poetic power and richness of allusion, and in the gigantic simplicity of its structural foundation, this sonata represents a profound achievement, outstanding even for Beethoven.

The opening Allegro assai begins with a phrase whose two halves embody contrary tendencies; the first measures consist of a mysterious triadic figure in gapped octaves, whereas the second half of the phrase presents an imploring, plaintive, harmonized gesture around an expressive trill. The tension implicit in this motivic juxtposition is heightened in the following phrase, and is soon concentrated into a four-note motive in the bass—three D-flats followed by a C—a motto that tersely encapsulates the harmonic tension. A crucial dramatic event in the movement revolves around the appearance in the development of the lyrical second theme in D-flat major. Already in the exposition, this theme had employed a bass line rising stepwise through a fifth. Now, in the development, the bass continues to rise, carrying the music through a series of modulations. After the ascent spans two octaves, the theme dissolves, and the music becomes, in Tovey’s words, “inarticulate.” All that remains of the thematic material is a rhythmically charged texture of arpeggios, and the music descends, in a free fall of four octaves, until impact is made on the low D-flat. In a brilliant stroke, Beethoven introduces at this point the four-note motto from the outset of the movement, the motive that so resembles the so-called “fate motive” of the Fifth Symphony.

In the overall design of the Sonata appassionata, Beethoven exploits a relation between serene lyricism in D-flat major and the tempestuous idiom in F minor analogous to that exposed in the first movement. Important are the parallels in character between the opening Allegro assai and the finale, Allegro ma non troppo, and especially the contrasting role of the slow movement, a set of variations in D-flat major on an almost static, hymnlike Andante theme. The variations embellish the theme through a series of progressive rhythmic subdivisions coordinated with a gradual ascent in register; yet the entire process is contemplative and dream-like, to be abruptly shattered by the first hint of action.

That confrontation occurs at the harmonic substitution of an arpeggiated diminished-seventh chord beneath the cadential D-flat in the treble that might, under other circumstances, have closed the movement. The arpeggiated chord returns an octave higher and is then hammered out 13 times in an accelerated tempo. The self-sufficiency of the variation movement is thus annihilated, as D-flat, the tonic note of the slow movement, now becomes a crucial dissonance in the context of F minor, recalling a similar treatment in the first movement.

According to Ferdinand Ries, Beethoven conceived this passage during and immediately after a long walk in the countryside near Vienna in the summer of 1804. Ries wrote that during the walk:

In which we went so far astray that we did not get back to Döbling, where Beethoven lived, until nearly 8 o’clock, he had been all the time humming and sometimes howling, always up and down, without singing any definite notes. In answer to my question what it was he said: “A theme for the last movement of the sonata [in F minor, Op. 57] has occurred to me.” When we entered the room he ran to the pianoforte without taking off his hat. I took a seat in the corner and he soon forgot all about me. Now he stormed for at least an hour with the beautiful finale of the sonata. Finally he got up, was surprised still to see me and said: “I cannot give you a lesson today, I must do some more work.”

What preoccupied Beethoven on that summer day in 1804 was one of his most unrelenting finales, a movement “whose tragic passion is rushing deathwards,” in Tovey’s words (if “rushing” is the right expression for a measured Allegro ma non troppo). Beethoven lends unusual weight to the later portions of the finale by prescribing a repetition of the development and recapitulation. After the repetition, we hear a Presto coda beginning with an ecstatically stamping dance that dissolves into a final, frenzied intensification of the turbulent rhetoric from the Allegro ma non troppo. The beginning of the coda has a dissociated, even shocking effect. It seems to represent a valiant yet futile attempt to break out of the downward rush of music burdened with a sense of tragic doom.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Sonata No. 17 in D Minor, Op. 31, No. 2, “Tempest”
Written in 1802, Beethoven’s Sonata No. 17 received its Carnegie Hall premiere on November 9, 1895, in a performance by Ignacy Jan Paderewski.

The Sonata Op. 31, No. 2, the so-called “Tempest,” is Beethoven’s only sonata in the key of D minor. An innovation of this work is its use of an opening theme that embraces two diametrically opposed tempos and characters: a hovering, ambiguous unfolding of dominant arpeggios, marked Largo; and a turbulent continuation stressing a rising bass and expressive two-note sigh figures, marked Allegro. The harmonically ambiguous opening allows Beethoven to delay the first strong cadence in D minor until the beginning of the apparent transition, where the initially suspended, arpeggiated motive is incarnated in the driven, propulsive Allegro. At the recapitulation, on the other hand, the mysterious arpeggios return, opening a sphere detached from the strife of the Allegro, and their expressive implications are now made explicit through passages of unaccompanied recitative. This recitative was the passage that influenced Beethoven, consciously or unconsciously, when he conceived the famous baritone recitative “O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!” (“O friends, not these tones!”) in the choral finale of the Ninth Symphony, another work in D minor.

The ensuing Adagio in the “Tempest” Sonata transforms elements from the first movement in a brighter, warmer context; the opening arpeggio now rests on the stable tonic sonority of B-flat major, and the following, double-dotted motives in the high register are reminiscent of the recitative. In the Allegretto finale, in D minor, Beethoven develops the arpeggiated chords throughout, as an all-encompassing, perpetuum mobile rhythm sweeps away the rhetoric of dialogue characteristic of the preceding movements. Intimate, speech-like accents are left behind here. As Jürgen Uhde has observed, the temporal drive of this finale opens a new and strangely distanced dimension suggestive not of spontaneous human expression but of engagement with objective phenomena beyond our control.

Sonata No. 11 in B-flat Major, Op. 22
Written in 1800, Beethoven’s Sonata No. 11 received its Carnegie Hall premiere on December 3, 1904, in a performance by Josef Hofmann.

In 1800, Beethoven completed the most Mozartian of his larger sonatas, Op. 22 in B-flat Major. The main theme of Beethoven’s Rondo finale somewhat resembles the beginning of Mozart’s beautiful sonata in this key, K. 333, as Richard Rosenberg has observed. But Beethoven’s deepest kinship with Mozart is reflected in aspects of the aesthetic character and formal procedure. Conflict is less prominent here than in many of Beethoven’s other sonatas. Even the agitated episode in the minor that begins the development of the opening Allegro con brio is balanced, in the passages preceding the recapitulation, by an immense decrescendo and reduction in tension. This brilliant movement dispenses entirely with a coda, a feature quite unusual for Beethoven though much more characteristic of Mozart.

The second movement, an Adagio con molta espressione in E-flat major, has a luxuriantly singing character, which reminded one commentator of a romance for solo violin with orchestral accompaniment. The following minuet in B-flat major blends the agile figuration from the first movement with the lyrical breadth of the Adagio, while the trio supplies dark, blustering contrast in the minor. In the expansive yet graciously intimate finale, Beethoven enriches the rondo design with features more characteristic of sonata procedure, such as the impressive contrapuntal treatment of the second theme in the central developmental episode. This Allegretto is one of several gracious rondo finales in the Beethoven sonatas, including Op. 2, No. 2; Op. 7; Op. 31, No. 1; and Op. 90.

—Copyright © 2008 by the Carnegie Hall Corporation

William Kinderman is the author of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and Beethoven (Oxford University Press) and of a new three-volume study of Beethoven’s creative process entitled Artaria 195 (University of Illinois Press).