David Dalle
Thursday June 19th, 2025 with David Dalle
Profoundly spiritual music with Beethoven's two final sonatas with Sviatoslav Richter, Alfred Brendel and Persian music with Parissa.
I need this music today. Some of the most profound, spiritual, and beautiful music I know. We will hear Beethoven's two final piano sonatas by two giants of the keyboard. Both supreme masters who spent a lifetime committed to uncovering the essence of Beethoven's music, but both very different from each other. We begin with Sviatoslav Richter and a newly released recording of Richter performing Beethoven in concert in 1965. These performances were recorded by Deutsche Grammophon with intention to release them, but, despite a few test pressings (which became extremely valued among employees of DG), the tapes ended up in DG's warehouse for six decades. There are several live recordings of Op. 110 by Richter spanning decades, but they are never redundant--Richter's interpretations were never the same twice. He was such a spontaneous and free musician, particularly in live performance.
The final piano sonata will feature Alfred Brendel, who just passed away on June 17th, aged 94. Beethoven was central to Brendel's life and unlike Richter, who for his own personal reasons was vehemently against recording complete cycles, Brendel was the first pianist to record the complete cycle of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas, in 1959. He went on to record two more complete cycles in the 70's and 90's.
Both these works represent Beethoven, and indeed music, at its most ineffable. Both reach out to the infinite, each one using means that were central to Beethoven's late music, the fugue in Op. 110, and variations in Op. 111. The fugue makes up the final movement of Op. 110, where it is introduced by a lamenting adagio. The fugue builds inexorably until it is interrupted by the heartbreaking adagio. The fugue begins again, building to its magisterial, transcendent conclusion, an exquisite affirmation of life and the beauty of existence, particularly in the hands of an artist like Richter.
| Piano Sonata No 31 in A flat op. 110 Ludwig Van Beethoven/Sviatoslav Richter - The Lost Tapes - Deutsche Grammophon 
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| For me, great Persian music is the equal of Beethoven in its profundity and passion; its extreme expression and yearning. We hear a stunning suite in dastgah Abu-Ata by Parissa and the incomparable Dastan Ensemble. This suite features compositions by Hossein Behroozinia, the barbat player for Dastan, interspersed with vocal and instrumental improvisations. I had the amazing fortune to see her perform with Dastan twice in Ottawa! |
| Dastgah Abu'Ata: Moghaddameh, Saz-O Avaz; Daramad Parissa & Dastan Ensemble - Gol-E Behesht - World Network |
| Dastgah Abu'Ata: Tasnif-E Dar Ayeneh Parissa & Dastan Ensemble - Gol-E Behesht - World Network |
| Dastgah Abu'Ata: Hedjaz (Gusheh) Parissa & Dastan Ensemble - Gol-E Behesht - World Network |
| Dastgah Abu'Ata: Chahar-Mezrab and Avaz (Chaharpareh) Parissa & Dastan Ensemble - Gol-E Behesht - World Network |
| Dastgah Abu'Ata: Kamancheh Solo Parissa & Dastan Ensemble - Gol-E Behesht - World Network |
| Dastgah Abu'Ata: Tasnif-E Hadith-E Asheghi Parissa & Dastan Ensemble - Gol-E Behesht - World Network |
| Beethoven's final sonata was also his final statement in c minor, a very significant key for Beethoven, used in very emotionally turbulent and dramatic works like his 5th symphony and Pathétique sonata. Only the first of the two movements of Op 111 is in c minor, and it does echo those earlier works, full of dark drama and a distraught soul. However this is contrasted by the 2nd movement, the famous Arietta, which pianist Andras Schiff called "A wonder of humanity" and "the most spiritual music from the most spiritual composer". The slow, mystical 2nd movement is in C major and is a theme and set of five variations. Musicologist and Beethoven specialist William Kinderman writes "As aways, Brendel remains close to Beethoven's notated text but goes beyond what is specified in the direction of the implied meanings. Structure becomes expression, and the yearning, aspiring character of the music seems to reach beyond the formal framework of the work itself. In the coda, the theme appears in the highest register, accompanied by a sustained trill on high G and ethereal passagework in the left hand. The processive momentum and registral ascent have now ruled out any sense of finality: the sonata has an open ending. As Brendel put it, the last 'chord does not close something off--rather it opens up the silence that follows, a silence we now perceive to be more important than the sound that preceded it." The rest is silence. |
| Piano Sonata No. 32 in c minor Op. 111 Ludwig Van Beethoven/Alfred Brendel - Great Pianists of the 20th Century vol. 13 - Philips |
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So did I... needed it, that is. With à nice cup of tea. Thank you !
2:29 PM, June 19th, 2025