Six Sonatas - Part 7

HKC was playing the last 6 Beethoven sonatas at Yale. I have at best, a limited understanding of music. While others were entranced by the playing, I was scanning the audience, looking at the three dimensional plaster ornaments on the walls, and trying to understand the program notes in the dim light, "The opening is a grand display of the instrument's capacity to take up sonic space, while its broad strokes are balanced against quiet and intimate gestures...." The concert felt like I was at some sort of geriatric competition. How many old people could they fit in a room? From my perch, I counted all the white haired attendees and estimated 70% were over 60 years old. If I were a struggling classical musician looking for work, I would target audiences at nursing homes. Then, were it not for corona viruses and quarantines I would expand my performance circuit to cruises. I sat for 3.5 hours, out of which I slept probably 10 minutes only to awake to the loud snoring of an old geezer sitting balcony left. It’s ironic, the spectators of classical music are 2-3 times older than the rebellious artists that created the musical genre. Schubert died young at 31, mozart expired at 35, chopin passed away at 39, Beethoven went down at 56 and bach took his last bow at 65. More surprisingly, pianists at the piano schools more or less track their classical music audience’s age... old. How do pianists best convey the music of a composer like beethoven who was born 250 years ago? I started thinking of different approaches pianists could take for performance:

Approach #1: oldie but goodie. Have 90 year old pianists play to 80 year audiences figuring both player and audience are closer to 250 years old than 15 year old rap music aficionados.

Approach #2: feel the pain. Have a pianist who understands the underlying turmoil that prompted the composer to write. I imagined a pianist searching job postings in an a local newspaper. “Wanted: a pianist who was beaten mercilessly as a kid, lost his mom early on, suffered heartbreaks by falling in love with married women, went deaf by meningitis, leaves brimming fetid chamber pots lying around his house, lost a protracted custody battle with sister in law over his nephew. Moorish dark skin, unkempt hair and politically revolutionary views a plus.” To his amazement, he fit all the tragic requirements of the ad. He was the perfect pianist for the job. All his life he could feel what Beethoven felt because he had gone through the same exact experiences... and in his performance he would highlight the musical passages to reinforce the feelings of trauma.

Approach #3 music analyzer. Rivaling watching paint dry is viewing pianists make technical lectures about playing Beethoven. enter Andras Schiff... "One year after opus 101. beethoven wrote 106. his most monumental piece dedicated to archduke rudolf... he finishes the adagio F sharp major, and then introduced the fugue. the basic idea of the falling thirds is clear. but beethoven knows he wants to write a fugue. you can imagine beethoven with a copy of bach's well tempered klavier. the first arpeggio he plays all the notes F. and then later he plays all the notes A. F and A is a tenth or enlarged version of a third. the first jump of the fugue is not a strict fugue. the second voice answers with a tonal answer. in a fugue there's a preposition and an answer. you can answer with a real answer.. or a tonal answer. beethoven uses all the inventions and devices of bach. we have the theme, inversion, augmentation, retrograde form..."