Ludwig Van Beethoven. Complete Works for Solo Piano

Ludwig van Beethoven. Complete Works for Solo Piano. Ronald Brautigam, fortepiano by Paul McNulty, 2001 , after an Anton Walter & Sohn instrument from c. 1802. Vol. 4: Sonata in Aflat Major, Opus 20 (18:21); Sonata in ?-flat Major, Opus 27, no. 1 (14:53); Sonata in C-sharp Minor, Opus 27, no. 2, Moonlight (14:31); Sonata in D Major, Opus 28, Pastoral, (24:42). Notes by Roeland Hazendqnk in English, German, and French. Recorded in August 2005 at Osteraker Church, Sweden. ©2006. BIS -SACD- 1473. $18.99. Rating: **** If you're interested in how Beethoven's fortepiano sonatas sound on the instruments of his day, this series come highly recommended. Though unknown to most Americans, Brautigam is an accomplished, prize-winning, and much recorded musician who plays widely with conductors such as Briiggen, Haitink, Herreweghe, Norrington, and Rattle. These four sonatas are particularly well served here. Brautigam is full of as much passion and/or poise as the music demands; nothing is mannered. The first CD is the series, containing Opuses 13, 14, nos. 1-2, and 22, was released in September 2004; volumes have appeared on a yearly basis since then. The Sonatas, Opuses 2 and 49, comprise the second volume, issued in June 2005. Volume 3 (June 2006) contains Opus 7 and Opus 10, nos. 1-3; vol. 5 (the diree sonatas in Opus 31) appeared in May 2007. The newest disk, vol. 6 (Opuses 53, 54, 57, 78), was released in July 2008. If you're building a CD collection of the sonatas played on original instruments, I'd recommend getting all the volumes and quickly. New copies of the first volume are over $50 on the web already; the others are still available from regular retail web oudets for reasonable prices. makes sense to focus this review on the Moonlight, the first movement of which is impossible to play on the modern piano as Beethoven indicated it to be played. The marking e senza sordino (and without the dampers) - thus, to be played with the damper rail off the strings for die entire movement - cannot be followed on the modern instrument because the tone is too voluptuously rich in overtones and long-lasting. On the fortepianos of the 1790s and first decade of the nineteenth century, however, the desired affect is miraculous and moody: once sounded, the chords float into the air and hover like halos above the succeeding chords. Special effects are for special music. As Roeland Hazendonk points out in his mosdy excellent notes, the musical symbols of the first movement parallel symbols used to depict tragedy and sadness: There is an unmistakable similarity between the broken chords of the first four measures of the Adagio - before the melody starts - and the accompanying strings in die scene where the Commendatore succumbs in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. Tm dying . . .' sings the murdered [sic] man. (Hard to sing when you're really dead, though many opera characters pull it off!) Hazendonk also points out that the dotted notes of the melody indicate a funeral march but argues that the gendy moving line and the long, winding character of the melody as it proceeds, however, are much more those of a resigned, comforting lament ... Almost all ofthat is right on, except that Beethoven did not aim, in my estimation, to comfort anyone but to depict pain. Czerny, Beethoven's fortepiano pupil, said so straightforwardly: It is a night scene, in which the voice of a complaining spirit is heard at a distance. Brautigam plays the first movement quite beautifully, but there's a meter problem and a meaning problem. Beethoven marked the movement to be played in cut time, that is, projecting the feeling of two pulses to each 4/4 measure. Like the majority of modern pianists, Brautigam plays four pulses to each measure, which is simply not Beethoven's direction. Part of the problem is that Brautigam plays the quarter notes relatively close to a metronome marking of 54 for the quarter note, the marking that Czerny recommended in The Art of Pkying Ancient and Modern Keyboard Compositions from 1846. …