Welcome to the 71st work in the Slipped Disc/Idagio Beethoven Edition

Sonatas for Violoncello and Piano No. 4 and 5 op. 102/1 and 102/2

On New Year’s Eve 1815, just ahead of a sumptuous banquet, Beethoven saw his patron’s palace burn to the ground. The residence of Count Andreas Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador in Vienna, was where the composer put on many of his premieres, notably the string quartets that bore his patron’s name. Without a place to rehearse and perform, the Razumovsky quartet dispersed across Vienna and beyond.

Its cellist Joseph Linke was engaged to entertain Countess Marie Erdödy and teacher her children at her estate on the Jedlersee. Beethoven, who had known the countess on and off for a decade, cadged himself an invitation in order to catch up with her cellist. It was seven years since he last wrote a sonata for the cello and he was ready to give it another go. In a letter to the Countess he made a bad joke on Linke’s name (which means Left), saying Linke would have to begin playing on the left bank of the Danube and bow himself across to the right. The composer was putting a brave face on an overwhelmingly troubled period in his life. It had been a year since he delivered a decent work.

Beethoven in his mid-forties had all but given up the quest for love and reconciled himself to loneliness. His hearing was gone, he was beset by aches and pains and he was locked in a never-ending court battle with his brother’s widow for custody of his nephew, Karl. There was very little around to make him smile yet, in the second half of 1815, he produced two great serenities for cello and piano, quite different from anything he had written before, a gateweay to a new phase in his creativity. The Beethoven analyst Martin Cooper writes: ‘Both (sonatas) show a combination of characteristics which do not appear in any earlier works of Beethoven’s with anything like the same consistency or concentration. In fact these two sonatas are the earliest examples of what we come to recognise as a new style, the style of the Third Period.’

The sonatas were greeted with blank faces. ‘We cannot warm to them,’ reported a listener. Few contemporaries, from here on, understood where Beethoven was heading with his music.

The first sonata, in C major, has two movements and takes up quarter of an hour. The second, in D major is 20 minutes long. It is tempting to address them as late masterpieces, except that Beethoven had no idea he was crossing a threshold as he wrote them. This is one of those occasions where we might be best off unaware of the circumstances of composition. Only as he reaches the double-line at the end do we begin to appreciate where we he has taken us.

The first thing we hear is the absence of ingratiation. Beethoven is not trying to please anyone with memorable tunes and grand gestures. His themes are large and, on the whole, unsingable. Even raptures of beauty – in the adagio of the fifth sonata, for instance – are imbued with transience. Pleasure, for this man, is fleeting, soon to give way to pain. Greatness beckons.

The cello practically whispers its way into the room, the pianist barely touches the keys. It’s as hard to get this opening right as it is to begin the G-major piano concerto. The French cellist Gautier Capuçon (2016) judges it to perfection. With Frank Braley at the piano, this is a superbly unfussy reading of a sonata that does not advertise its own importance. Another French pair – pianist François-Frédéric Guy and cellist Xavier Phillips (2014) – are a fraction more tentative but no less enjoyable companions on this journey into the dark landscape of late Beethoven.

In won’t enumerate all the recommendable performers of these two sonatas. They are practically the same as those I listed yesterday for the 3rd sonata, with Casals/Serkin and Rostropovich/Richter at the head of a pack of immortals and Maisky/Argerich standing out with the dominant series of modern times.

Let me, rather, draw your attention, to the almost-rans. Yo Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax, for instance. A match made over a record executive’s lunch, their performances promises much and keeps on promising until the listener loses patience. Ma is striving for the big statement, Ax for the indelible phrase. Beethoven is an experiment in their sound lab that just doesn’t work.

Jacqueline du Pré and Daniel Barenboim (1971) are another pair who fail to catch fire. Not much sounds right in this live recording, rippled with aoudience coughs. The cellist lacks lustre and is placed so far back that she is almost inaudible against the thundering, blundering piano. We know now that Du Pré, still in her 20s, as in the initial stages of multiple sclerosis and no longer confident in her physical responses to the instrument. That awareness adds a dimension of human tragedy to our perception, but this is not a set you would expect to listen to with any comfort.

Two of the biggest names on the mid-century stage – Gregor Piatigorsky and Arthur Rubinstein (1957) – might as well be phoning in their solo parts for all the engagement their generate in the adagio of the 4th sonata. What were they thinking? And did Rubi bribe the engineers with a good cigar to make his piano three times as prominent as the cello. The moments of lift-off feel almost unintended.

Let me draw your attention, rather, to the benign and reflective approach of Leonard Rose as he takes us, with pianist Leonid Hambro, into the darkening clouds of the adagio of the fifth sonata, with the cello taking the part of Everyman on the path to our common fate. The recording appears to be remastered from Rose’s celebrated 1953 recitals at the Library of Congress, a moment in history when the fate of the world hung in the balance. There’s a Paul Tortelier recording from 1949 Berlin that has something of this knife-edge atmosphere.

It is in the adagio that Beethoven develops the language that will serve his last piano sonatas and his late string quartets. There is a disconcerting cry at around 4:30, reminiscent of his song ‘Ah, perfido!, that welds despair to resignation. One has the sense of an artist accepting his final duty of self-sacrifice. The young Jan Vogler captures this uncannily in his 1994 recital with Bruno Canino. No less intense is Matt Haimovitz (2015) in partnership with the fortepiano of Christopher O’Riley, the thinner keyboard sound ideally suiting this contemplation. But I would be deceiving myself if I did not recognise that, both for penetration and perfect sound, Maisky and Argerich are incontestable.

 

Lars-Erik Larsson wrote music for invisibe movies. This is his most popular.

And this is the next.

 

The was Alexander Krichel’s Covid breakthrough last weekend.

He spends a lot of time talking at the beginning, presumably to calm the flutters, but the performance is fine and the concentration high.

The TV cameras do not show what goes on in the cars.

Watch here.

This is Nurit Bar-Josef, concertmaster of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C.

Nurit tells us she decided to ‘put together this short video of Ravel’s Kaddish, to commemorate those we have lost to this pandemic’.

It’s a beautiful thought, wonderfully played.

The pianist is Efi Hackmey, co-artistic director of the Chiarina Chamber players. Suitably distanced, across the city.

 

This may be the most obtuse press release of the whole Covid period.

It begins: 2020 TANGLEWOOD LIVE PERFORMANCE AND EDUCATION PROGRAMS, SCHEDULED TO TAKE PLACE JUNE 19-AUGUST 27, ARE CANCELED DUE TO CONCERNS OVER SPREAD OF COVID-19

That’s really sad, but everything is off.

It continues: SEASON OFFERINGS WILL NOW TAKE PLACE THROUGH TANGLEWOOD 2020 ONLINE FESTIVAL, A GROUNDBREAKING DIGITAL SERIES OF AUDIO AND VIDEO STREAMS.

Everything is still off.

For plain English read BSO president Mark Volpe:
All of us at the Boston Symphony Orchestra deeply wish we could have found a way to present performances at Tanglewood this summer. We explored every possible scenario to try to save all or part of our concert schedule, but with the health of the greater Tanglewood community as our highest priority, performances with audiences are not possible. Since the only time the festival was canceled outright was in 1945 due to World War II, you can only imagine what a difficult decision it was. “I hope everyone wholoves Tanglewood will take advantage of the diverse offerings of Tanglewood 2020 Online Festival,as every effort has been made to bring the spirit of Tanglewood into the numerous video and audio streams featured throughout the summer. With multi-layered content that also focuses on the Tanglewood Music Center and the Tanglewood Learning Institute, we believe these online programs have the potential to break new ground. Most importantly, we hope they will maintain connections with our Tanglewood communityand provide the inspiration needed during this challenging period.“Though we understandthat nothing takes the place of a live performance, during this hiatus summerI hope Tanglewood’s loyal supporters will sit in their yards or homes on a Sunday afternoon watching a video stream of a recent BSO performance from the Shed, or spend a Friday or Saturday evening enjoying newly-recorded performance streams. This content will highlight our wonderful BSO musicians and treasured guest artists who were to be featured on the stages of the Shed and Ozawa Hall this summer.

 

Almost at the moment that Salzburg declared itself ready to put on a mini-festival, the Bregenz Festival called off its summer.

Bregenz operates by filling 7,000 seats on the floating stage.

The most it can hope for under eased regulations is 1,000.

 

The specifics are unclear, but the response to this morning’s easing of federal restrictions has been instantaneous.

From the press release:

The Salzburg Festival is pleased that after long weeks without live events, this means that artists can once again invite their audiences to experience art together.

What exactly will become possible can only be explored after the ordinance has been published. After all, the old saying that “the devil is in the detail” applies particularly to the current situation. In particular, clarification is needed on the conditions under which stage rehearsals and performances by orchestras and choruses will be permissible.

The only thing that is certain is that the new health regulations mean that the Festival cannot take place as planned before the outbreak of the pandemic, both in terms of programming and duration. Therefore, the Festival will present an alternative for this extremely challenging year to the Supervisory Board on 25 May 2020. A modified Festival seems possible.

The Festival aims to publish the newly arranged programme for the summer in early June. Details on the further procedure for tickets previously purchased will be communicated to all our customers shortly and will also be published on our website.

This demonstrates that the directorate was justified to pursue a strategy of not cancelling the Festival too early, but waiting and observing the development of the pandemic, setting 30 May as the goal for decision-making.

 

Angelo Lo Forese died yesterday in Milan, six weeks after reaching his centenary.

After a 1952 Trovatore debut in Morocco, he sang in more than 80 operas on three continents. The title of his memoirs is ‘The Tenor with the packed suitcase under his bed’.

He was in fine voice well into his 90s.

Here’s how he hit a high C. Old school.


And here he goes at 92.

Legend.

The diva’s practising Abigaille from Nabucco in the privacy of her instagram feed.

 

 

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She’s due to sing the role at the Met for the frst time just under a year from now. Plenty of time to work on it.

 

Hours after Ulrike Lunacek got on her bike her Green party colleague, Health Minister Rudolf Anschober, issued a new policy authorising public performances from May 29, outdoors and indoors, with an audience of up to 100.

That number will increase to 250 from July 1 and 500 from August 1.

That’s what Salzburg has been waiting for. However, Bregenz will almost certainly cancel.

 

Manuel Hernandez-Silva has just quit as music director of the orchestra of Navarra, claiming ‘irreconcilable artistic and administrative divergences’ with the chief executive.

He recently succeeded Antoni Wit in the podium.

She’s Maria Antonia Rodríguez, former principal flute at the national radio orchestra, RTVE.

 

 

 

We have been sent last night’s pictures from Ostrava (where Janacek died) of the first permitted concert since the lockdown.

The players wore masks, the audience was distanced.

Watch the video.