Approaching (Pianoscapes no.) 50...

Pianoscapes no. 50 is fast approaching, and I'm playing music by Beethoven...

Not something I would usually do.

I first heard the music of Beethoven via his piano sonatas, on the album in the picture above - when I was a small child in the 1970s - at some point my parents thought it a good idea to own a Beethoven piano sonata album. Why, I wonder? I dunno, but the music was a totally immersive experience for my young and hungry imagination - it was overflowing with moods, ideas and energy. What is this??

And then, as an older child, probably in early teens - 1980s now - trying to play some of that same music. I think it was my sister that brought this book of the sonatas into the house; an old book, bound at the spine with what looked like packing tape and with home-made stencilling on the cover...

The excitement of being able to read the music, and to make it happen for real, live - the 'Moonlight'! The 'Pathetique'! And later, when another (different) album of Beethoven piano sonatas appeared in my parents record collection, becoming acquainted with the 'Waldstein' sonata and trying to play that too. Wow! Powerful, exciting stuff.

 But I've never been a fan of Beethoven's music, really, other than his piano sonatas. As an A level music student I dutifully acquainted myself with the 5th Symphony, of course, and some of the others... but the musical language didn't do it for me - the symphonies were purely a vehicle for me to understand the syntax of the period. 

Nonetheless, I've been playing the 2nd movement of the Pathetique sonata ever since those 1980s days, and it's been a cornerstone of my repertoire; similarly, the 'Moonlight' (1st mvt) has travelled with me since those days - it was one of the first pieces that I 

performed to an audience (c.1985? The only secondary school concert that I took part in, I think!). I guess it's just one of those pieces that every pianist has to play, and to know. And, goddammit, these sonatas are just beautiful. Whatever you think of 'classical music', this guy writes a damn good melody and knows how to create a drama.

But the outer movements of the Pathetique are a bit more of a challenge, and take more work. Beethoven wrote it in 1798, when he was just 27 years old. Like the 'Moonlight' sonata, it's one of the most celebrated piano works in 'the canon', and the title refers to the due to the tragic and expressive nature of the music. It was written at a time when keyboard pieces needed to be interchangeable for either the (older instrument) harpsichord, or the (newfangled) pianoforte, and when you consider this music as a harpsichord piece - as I did only recently - it changes everything... It makes perfect sense, but it sure pulls the rug out from under you (well, it did me).

Factor into this the bizarre but vaguely plausible ideas about tempo promoted by Wim Winters on Youtube (see his channel 'Authentic Sound'), and new approaches to the music of Beethoven present themselves. I had always avoided these sonatas as projects to get stuck into and really work at, being as they are the 'go to' pieces for aspiring virtuosi (ie. not me!), and rather 'obvious' choices; my preferences are for the paths less trodden, the more obscure music that needs playing because nobody else is playing it. But in August I decided to return to the 'Pathetique' and work on it with focus; to see it with new eyes and hear it with new ears; and to try and bring a more creative and interpretive sensibility to it than I would have previously allowed myself, being 'indoctrinated' as I was by those vinyl records of my childhood, into believing that there was only one way to approach this music. 

The volume above is the second set of the Beethoven sonatas that has come to me so far in my lifetime (I have Vol II as well as the pictured Vol I - 'the works'!). It's been good having it back on the music stand every day over the past few weeks.

The usual signs and portents have been in evidence to support my activities in this Beethovenian direction. Two examples: (1) after playing through the sonata one evening in our accommodation in the west of Ireland, mid-August, the next day we went into a music shop in the locality... to be greeted by the sound of the 2nd movement of that same sonata, accompanied by the sound of waves on the shore - some new-age re-calibration of Ludvig's original....

(2) This, unprompted, on FaceAche, a few days ago, from an ex-colleague from the SUAC days...

In conclusion -  as a result of all this, I've been reappraising the piano sonatas of the late great LvB.
As Alfred Brendel has written: “We pianists are fortunate to have the chance to follow the path of his 32 piano sonatas… Who else offers the range from comedy to tragedy, from the lightness of many of his variation works to the forces of nature that he not only unleashed but held in check? And which master managed, as Beethoven did in his late music, to weld together present, past and future, the sublime and the profane?”
​

​SO... to 'Pianoscapes no. 50' 

Delving into my archive of concert posters and press releases, set lists and programmes, for my concerts over the past 6 years, as I write this blog...

...I find that... (and I'm a bit unsettled here!)...

the first piece in the first Pianoscapes back in 2017 was... the opening of the 'Pathetique' sonata.

​I'm lost for words!

The article in the Evesham Journal, from September 2017 (in the top photo above) - wittily (?) titled 'Piano's His Forte' - states that there will be '3 concerts' in which 'listeners will be taken on a journey through more than 500 years of keyboard music'... hmmm, that's one long concert!

So, here we are, 6 years, 49 concerts later... I've researched, learnt and played music by over 172 composers / artists / bands, and that's not including 'trad', who has also featured a helluva lot.

I didn't envisage things unfolding to this point - but am very glad that they have. I have to thank all the listeners and Sonic Adventurers who have supported these concerts: setting aside their Sunday afternoons to come with me on a wave of music... Thankyou for having the curiosity and the courage to take on the unknown. You have valued live music; you have allowed me to surprise and maybe unnerve you... and you trusted my improvisational efforts and my electronic explorations.

In No. 50 I'll be playing - alongside the music of Beethoven - a selection from Mamoru Fujieda's Patterns of Plants. I had to order the score from Japan, and it took so long to arrive that I'd given up on it... but - amazingly - it arrived 1 day before I left for Ireland. So I took Patterns of Plants to the Emerald Isle...

There will also be the next in my series of transcriptions from Keith Jarrett's wonderful 'Book of Ways' - amazing clavichord improvisations - see my previous blog re. these.

And, if I can pull it together, a couple of fugues: Keith Emerson meets Dmitri Shostakovich.

And, as always, there will be 'more'... 

And, of course, CAKE.

See you there - and here's to the next 50!

Chris Long
Friday 16 September 2022