Beethoven: Sonata Op.111 No.32 in C Minor (Uchida)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ส.ค. 2015
- Yes, okay, this praise is a little hackneyed, and there’s no shortage of wild-eyed gushing over this sonata, but this sonata is not just great but profound -- a staunchly (weirdly) unrepresentative apotheosis of the form. I’m not sure this sonata can be properly explained - as Wittgenstein said, mysteries are meant to be deepened, not explained, but I’ll try to point out some interesting features. In general, the sonata is strange because it’s in just two movements: the first a welter of surging darkness, the second sharply contrasting, but otherwise more or less beyond conventional description. No-one’s quite sure if Beethoven really meant to write a 3rd movement, but it’s true in any case that the sonata has a searching, hanging quality despite the straightforward dualism between the two movements (major/minor, fast/slow, harmonic agitation/harmonic stasis, angular/melodic, propulsive/static, terrestrial/divine.)
The allegro:
- The striking opening, about which probably more than enough has already been said.
- The profusion of diminished 7ths in the introduction, which has no apparently structural answer (cf the Pathetique) even though it is mirrored (possibly) in the development at: 6:09
- If you listen to Romantic fugues, you’ll can’t help but keep thinking that the texture of the entire movement is extremely fugal (see esp 5:50). Properly speaking, the dramatic tremolo leads into a fugal theme that is never realised, instead turning into a free-form canon. The entire work is characterised by this sort of deliberate incompleteness: notice how disjointed the two main motives of the movement are, and how they never really seem to get off the ground. (Hence the description you’ll keep encountering when reading about this movement: “struggle”.)
- Note how often Beethoven uses the dramatic device of placing the hands quite far apart when you wouldn’t expect this. For instance, if both hands are playing mirroring each other, they will be two octaves apart, so that there is an “unspoken” note between them (6:18, 6:56, 8:32).
The arietta (theme and variations):
- Something which almost everyone fails to notice is that this arietta begins on an upbeat. The melody proper does not begin with the C-G fall. Instead it begins E-F-D. (Try to keep this in mind as you go through the variations.)
- That being said, for a set of variations, this entire 2nd movement is marked by rather exalted strangeness.
- Consider the nature of the variations themselves. They do not wander into different keys. They do not change tempo (NB the “incorrect” time signatures, since Beethoven leaves out all the implied triplets). They contain no thematic transformation in the style of Liszt in his B minor sonata. They do not elaborate on portions on the theme (cf the Diabelli Variations). Instead, each variation is a model of structural minimalism (something totally weird to ascribe to Beethoven): it goes through the theme’s harmony exactly as first written, preserving the broad melodic contour, and all that changes is how much each beat is subdivided: each variation (roughly speaking) divides the beats in the previous variation into either 3 or 4. The extraordinary thing is how much the nature of the theme changes via this simple device: it starts out form something that’s serene in a rather static, glacial, quietly monumental sort of way (9:20), and then gains a berceuse-ish lilt (11:38), and then a bit of swing (13:58), and then erupts into ecstasy (15:56 - this sounds like boogie-woogie, and there’s nothing wrong with listening to it that way, but be aware that this rhythmic pattern is something that has grown naturally out of all that has come before, and that this is not supposed to sound light-hearted but brokenly propulsive, maybe even rapturous in a slightly painful way), and then becomes a set of muted pulses of colour (18:00, 19:16) strung within an ethereal halo (18:40, 19:56) - a whisper, really, that proves that major keys can do a lot more than be happy, and can in fact be very sad - and then becomes a heart-stoppingly generous, grateful chorale (23:30).
- This very straightforward variation structure is interrupted at one point and one point only, and that moment is (like many of the moments of structural breakdown in Beethoven’s last sonatas) utterly gorgeous - listen for those tiny dissonances at the peak of the implied LH melody (20:41) - and then utterly devastating (22:07). It features the only modulation in the movement.
- This is the basic thing about the movement: a simple, unpromising theme, developed via a simple, unpromising heuristic, producing something sublime. (I mean sublime not in the usual sense, but in the Shaftesbury + Burke sense - big enough to look unmade, unheroic, unpropelled by any sense of human craft or will, a bit scary.) - เพลง
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My dad died last summer. It was pneumonia, but fortunately for him and the family it was not covid, so we were able to be with him when they took off the bipap for the last time. We had hoped that we would be able to talk with him briefly (with the bipap on, he could understand what we were saying, but we could not hear his responses) but as soon as it was off, it was so hard for him to breathe that he could not talk. Instead he was gasping and groaning, and we could tell he was deeply afraid. I had my phone with me. My dad and I had often listened to this sonata together; he described it as the most sublime piece of music ever written. I had never used youtube on my phone before, but I asked my family if it was ok for me to try to find music to play, and everyone agreed. This performance was the one that came up on top of the list for this sonata, and I was able, by lucky chance, to navigate to the beginning of the Arietta. I put the phone to my dad's ear. He listened. He relaxed. He stopped groaning. He listened quietly as his breathing slowed and stopped. We all listened together until the end of the work. I will be forever grateful that this performance was accessible to me at that time.
@jelly dog you don't care until your father dies and then you realise there exist people like you
@jelly dog you are an unremarkable human being if you feel the need to insult.
@jelly dog keep your glue sniffing off the comments, for God's sake.
@jelly dog I am amazed you made effort to write this comment just to be mean. Such stories inspire people, keep comments like these to yourself, so we all are happy :))
@jelly dog well, you cared enough to comment
So since 15:55 we could hear jazz/ragtime, than an unearthly metaphisical spheric music, than finally from 21:15 a perfect Schönberg-like disharmonic-monotonic 20th century style avantgarde. So we could hear everything 100-150 years before it appeared. Prophet Beethoven predicted the future of the music in 1822. Thank you Lord he existed on this planet!
0:00 - 1st movement
9:20 - 2nd movement
Beethoven never lost it. He only got better. My hero.
You obviously never heard his _Haiesprung_
@@DrWhom I had a music professor in college who asserted that Beethoven had indeed written some schlock. I never bothered to hunt it down. Thanks for the hot lead...
Good!!!!
@@DrWhom What's that? I tried looking for a piece with that title but couldn't find anything. Genuinely curious!
@@DrWhom yeah what is this? I can't find it.
The ending of this sonata... Just the last 3 bars... I don't know why, but it's sooo heartbreaking for me to know that this is the ending to the last sonata of the great Beethoven. I'ts so pure and simple, yet so emotional and full of hope.
This last sonata Beethoven composed is so deep. Full of magic and beauty. I just have to listen again and again to appreciate more of the beauty.
That accounts for so many great pieces of classical music
Awesome musicianship..great artist!
Uchida certainly has a contra-octave in the grand piano.
my kawai concert art is a pretty mundane player after that..also the same match i have studied op111. Very nice interpretation thank Uchida!
@@jyky3453 what's a contra-octave?
15:55 holy.. this came in early, 100 years early. This is just truly ahead of it's time, it's incredible.
Yep - have you heard Alfred Brendel's early 1970s recording of this sonata - and not least that "proto-jazz" section? Absolutely amazing. I've gathered up half a dozen recordings of this sonata over the years, by various great pianists - Richter, Ashkenazy, Arrau... and including this one - but Brendel's reading was the first one I heard and it remains a favourite. His subtle use of syncopation and dynamic shifts all through the second movement, his ability to make it sound half improvised even on a 100th listen, his amazing rhythmic control: the recording is a visionary, groovy masterpiece! :)
Never heard of Contrapunctus 2 by Bach?
@@user-fu7zf4ck9z Shuffle rhythm equals to jazz? Even if the music was purely baroque?
This is regtime, pure regtime almost 100 years before regtime existed...
@@kevhynaleks2631 whats regtime?
15:56 "Do you like jazz?" "I'm the jazz."
yes
look to my channel, thanks i have much music
hahaha i heard it...
i heard one time Bill Evans say Jazz is the continuation of Classical music... i mean i hear this, and dude these dudes im sure they improvised too all the time.... there is just no way for us to know about it...
@@usmc1875 A lot of no.18 feels improvised
Yeah, Swinging!!!
All of his sonatas get more and more complex and difficult to play over time. He didnt suddenly become a better piano player 15 yesrs later when he was deaf. Once his hearing faded enough where he could no longer perform them, thats when we see a jump to extremely complex and some cases bizarre music. He could finally write everything based on complex math patterns and not have to worry about actually performing it. Win win for Beethoven in my opinion. At this point, he just wrote whatever he wanted and let someone else worry about playing it later. No other composer had that luxury.
This sonata represents the spirit of Beethoven, the struggle he faced through his life and the hope that guided him in his final years. It's a testament to humanity: a C minor sonata, struggling through the Allegro con brio, floating with the variations (which bear a lot of contrasts between light and darkness) and ending the cycle of the sonatas with a wonderful and hopeful C major chord. Masterpiece. This is why there's no need for a third movement: the message is already there and it is clear and bright as the sun.
20:25 this is pure beauty 💙
Anyway: Uchida plays this beautifully, with extreme fidelity to every single one of Beethoven's instructions (note the crescendos and decrescendos). The contrapuntal textures are very clear, the bass clean and powerful, and the pianissimos, which are crucial to the whole 2nd movement, are handled with utmost delicacy. I think the reason why the 2nd movement here is the best I've heard is because Uchida is so familiar with Schubert -- there's a lot of the same sense of harmony needed to keep Schubert going, an awareness of large structures stretched out over long periods of time, that's needed to keep this sonata sounding coherent.
Thank you for this cogent explanation. I am a novice to to this sonata and now am better informed, thanks to you.
Wow you must be deaf, stupid or ignorant to think that this is the best rendition. Richter's 1975 Moscow performance leaves Uchida sounding like a fucking amateur.
th-cam.com/video/DjE1yst49rU/w-d-xo.html
I have often found your comments to be quite astute, but I have to disagree as to Uchida´s fidelity to the score. There are many articulations that are not as is in the score and (of course a matter of opinion), I object to the sudden change of tempo in the first movement a few bars before Beethoven writes "meno allegro" - I assume he wrote meno allegro where he wanted it! Also, why all of the tempo changes in the Arietta during the "Variations" that have exactly the same structure as the theme?. With all due respect for a seriously considered performance, I feel that this work actually benefits from a less "personal" and more abstract approach. The enormous dimensions become clearer when there is less "local interest".
@@peternovy1163 Imagine being so insecure your ego bursts right open when someone states a different opinion than you. I think Richter's performance doesn't hold a candle to Uchida's because the entire piece is basically fortissimo and sounds like he's just in a hurry to finish it.
Uchida is playing the 2nd movement very soulful and fine and Richter also did a good job. They are both great pianists
This piece is a blessing from Beethoven for us to listen to. I can't describe how much I love it. The Arietta touches the deepest parts of my heart no other piece has done before.
which one is arietta?
@@TheTamtamuna The second movement is titled Arietta.
Arietta IS Testament
23:30 When the key signature drops its flats mid-measure for the recapitulation variation, it always feels to me like chains have been broken, they fall to the ground, and the music soars into the sky.
Finally! I'm finished listening and familiarizing all Beethoven Sonatas in 2 years. It's such an amazing journey to me. So many emotions I got from his music =>
Thank you Mr. Ashish for compiling this gems. I'm glad I discovered classical music
Mitsuko Uchida is peerless in this performance. The clarity of her playing supports the rigorous logic of Beethoven's musical architecture as she lets the score speak for itself. With this final sonata Beethoven equals anything previously written in terms of polyphonic complexity and dramatic grandeur. I am still amazed by this sonata even after hearing it dozens of times.
My goodness!!! This piece is beyond excellent. The Arietta, beauty bought out of pure simplicity. Simple, yet tremendously complex in meaning, just honey for your ears. And let's not forget the exceptional pianist behind this amazing interpretation. Strong as an ox, and light as a feather where needed. Just.... no words to describe. I really hope non-classical music listeners stumble across this masterpiece, I'm quite certain that absolutely anyone can find this piece a mesmerising artefact left behind by Master of romanticism, the one and only Beethoven. This piece really helped me today, thanks a bunch. Hope everyone has a wonderful day!!!🙂
ditto
It's funny how I can listen to all Beethoven Sonatas almost daily and never be bored of it, yet I can't even imagine having to watch/listen to anything else other than Classical music for over 5 hours, let alone around 12 lol. All Sonatas have such a unique feeling to them it's so good. How much I would love to be able to play movements, let alone full Beethoven Sonata's one day. One day I'll get there and I'll play through all of them I swear :)
Yes, I hope you can get there. One year passed, Have you get closer to it? XD
One measure at a time bro.
@@goochystankmama1950 I have played 3 Beethoven Sonatas so far (both op. 49 and op. 79), but this is honestly still FAR out of reach. Currently learning Clair de Lune actually. My teacher wanted me to learn a more romantic piece, and she's pretty big on Debussy. It's very weird and new to me, but a fun challenge nonetheless
@@jordidewaard2937 awesome! Debussy’s music is great. If you aren’t familiar with a lot of his work, I’d check out Reverie and Des pas sur la neige
@@goochystankmama1950 It truly is. For me, Clair de Lune will be the first real "mature" piece that I will learn. The 2 op 49 Beethoven Sonatas are often not seen as true Sonatas due to their low difficulty and length, but Clair de Lune for me will be my first actual impressive piece.
I actually had a lesson earlier with my teacher (our first lesson discussing this piece), and I noticed that once again I was being too hasty. I was getting slightly frustrated at the difficulty of reading the chords, the difficulty of not playing a wrong note (as you should know, someone playing a lot of Beethoven and Bach, and a bit of Chopin will struggle with the often seemingly random Debussy chords haha) but I got quite far (until the "En Animant" part, which imo (and a lot of others) is the hardest part of the piece, anything before that I could do at tempo without mistakes) and my teacher was quite surprised at my progress in 1-2 weeks.
This piece once again reminds me to truly respect the "grind". How easy it is to want to learn something too fast, but also how scary that can be because you'll overlook things (for example on the first page you have the g-flat, b-flat, e-flat chord, which I initially played as a regular G, small things like that).
Getting the left hand working is magical though, such beautiful chords
From 18:40 to 21:00 I really believe this is not music created by a human. It comes from somewhere out in the universe. The genius is that Ludwig had access to that dimension even if for only a couple of minutes. Wow!
Philip Glass described music as an underground river which he visited. His compositions were what he could bring back.
I heard first time 30 years ago that part, i was 20. And thought that's something metaphisical secret code hiding in the language of music....There is something unearthy in that part, that's sure...
It is not created by a human because Beethoven is God.
Beethoven = God.
9:21 - 2nd movement.
I cannot explain this, but tears went out from my eyes, my body and soul did shiver while I listened. I was studying and this boogie-woogie moment showed up... I had to look very surprised at the music sheet, read the description and then I could not do anything but continue listening. Beethoven and Uchida took me from my relative peace and put me in some place I was not prepared to go. Thank you, both.
I am so happy to have found this. I decided to listen to all thirty-two sonatas, and currently this is my third favourite after the Pathetique and the Appassionata.
24:35, where that final full variation comes to its close and we enter the home stretch, is maybe one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful, well-earned, subtle climaxes ever written. It sounds like it's in the middle of the action, but structurally this is an absolutely monumental moment and the significance of this final denouement after the journey of 32 sonatas is profound. The rhetoric of that chord progression, especially that striving high C-A-A, just kills me every time. There is a finality and a power here that leaps out of the page with such force that it sounds like it wants to speak with words. The rest of the movement, which is a substantial amount of music, achieves such an intensely poignant valedictory quality that I'm not surprised so many (including Ashish and apparently me) are always reduced to exhausted superlatives.
This is a wonderful introduction to this excellent song, which I have loved for many years and am continuously learning from. Thank you.
15:58 Ragtime Beethoven! That was some syncopation unheard of for his time.
@@KevinR3i Oh yeah, was a composition major! There was syncopation in the Middle Ages. It's just that it has a jazziness uncommon for a sonata in the Classical period.
That final trill sounds like a blanket - protection for the notes beneath, like assurance that everything is going to be okay.
Greatest composition ever. I love Bach, but this is exceptional. Beyond comprehension.
Bach?
Or do u mean the vid where he said Beethoven’s last sonata when it was just Fur Elise
beyond, above, so high...
no, Die Lit by Playboi Carti is just slightly better than this
Bach admiraba a corelli
13:25 gosh, this is the hardest page I've ever seen...
Lol true!
LOL! How about Alkan, Sorabji,... You are being very ignorant, y'know?
@@segmentsAndCurves BRUH, IT IS SARCASM. HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF JOKES?
@@user-yx9sj5ws8k Surprisingly, I'm joking too. Cause nobody is stupid enough to not get this joke (except elitist, I think).
Don't worry, this joke is meant to trap you, so I won't blame you.
@@segmentsAndCurves Oh, I'm sorry then 😅
1:49-1:58 Whenever I see one of the portraits of the older Beethoven, the wild-haired scowling "Titan" this is the phrase that most often comes to my mind.
19:19 perfect
Listening to the first movement alone, I can definitely see where Liszt got some of his inspiration from. Parts of this reminded me of the B minor sonata.
@Andrea Murrone kinda reminds me of ballade 3 coda
Magnifque interprétation ! Complètement dans l'esprit bééthovénien ... Un vrai délice à écouter, merci du fond du coeur !
Mr Kumar, you are one of the very few who truly understand music on TH-cam. Indeed, this is profound. I don't believe B would've done a 3rd mvmt at all, this music is the full story. Dark, light, sin/redemption, anger/love. I have felt for some time, about 45 years, that this is the greatest keyboard work, ever. but... then there's Bach
This gets so pretty. I'm listening at about 10 minutes in and feeling the lonely universe declare its existence to me.
The arietta is my favorite music in the world if "in the world" is the right description. No one has matched in 200 years ( I checked) and it doesn't really end. It's part of the universe forever.
I don't really remember how many times I have listened to this Arietta...but I do feel that I am listening to The Bible... (period, for life...)... from the bottom of my heart...
Jack Neidinger Best definition of the Arietta that I've ever heard in my entire life
I feel the exact same way about Chopin’s Ballade 4
you are correct
@@MrMannnMannn This is correct
Tx for all your uploadings! Best youtuber!
Why do I love this so much
The man was so brilliant he was doing rag rhythms long before they were ever really a thing
That transition around 12:14, is one of my favorites in the classical literature.
I hear the descending initial melodic leap of the Arietta melody as the answer to the dim 7th gestures of the sonata's opening. Beethoven seems to point that up as in Var 1 the very first melody interval is immediately transformed into the same intervallic distance as the sonata's opening. The way that opening gesture is made to bear the responsibility of closing the entire sonata, first exposed as the descending head of the melody at 21:17, toyed with there for a few minutes as the only real thematic development until we reach C major again, and then - finally - inverted to rise instead of fall, fully makes me certain that this is the "structural" answer to the diminished 7ths of the intro to the 1st movement the poster is looking for. Hear that ending rising 4th motif as the redemption of the beginning one some 30 mins ago.
nerd
Yes, the same thought occurred to me, and I congratulated myself on how clever I am! C. Rosen has noted the resemblance of the conclusions of the Opus 111 and the Diabelli Variations, and remarked on how Beethoven distilled the utterly different themes of the two works to the same essence.
Thank you for posting this, with the score, and with your comments.Like any work of genius, this astounding work of art reveals itself slowly, over a lifetime, with each repeated listening. It grows as we grow.It adds meaning to the meaning we add to it.
Mitsuko Uchida is a pianist with a poetic temperament. She captures and conveys the real Beethoven [probably not the only real Beethoven,, but she gets him]: a true appreciation, with depth, respect, and soul.
Excellent notes. Thank you, Kumar!
Le génie incandescent, dans toute sa splendeur... Gloire de l'humanité!
Wow..all the polyphony of the second movement heard here
So nice,suddenly reminds me of Chopin’s preludes
Uschida is on of the best playing LvB :s sonatas, especially this one.
Huge innovation starting jazz and boogie that was carried on by Scott Joplin after him. Giant jazz stuff happening in this that ends at around 18:30. Genius.
"there is nothing new under the sun"
Innovation for sure, but it is not jazz.
@@Dylonely42It's ragtime.
Winderful ragtime music from 100 years before the ragtime came out...
exactly what I was saying!@@kevhynaleks2631
I love the jazz in the 2nd movement so much
Bibbermans He was a century ahead of his time.
Louise X Actually, apparently he had this metal bar that got attached to his piano, and he’d bite down on the bar to hear the music from the piano through his BONES!
@@jkrai9684 Oh yeah? I hadn't heard of that story!
gallop rhythms not necessarily means "Jazz", but it feels swingy
he invents RAGTIME there!
Esta sonata está llena sorpresas. Es dura y da miedo. Hace gracia. Se puede bailar a ratos. Otros hace llorar de emoción. Parece jazz a ratos. Y el final es una despedida un atardecer bellísimo.
Me sees Mitsuko Uchida as utterly sublime in her interpretation of this utterly sublime sonata.
I totally agree. I have heard this played by scores of pianists, but her interpretation 'made' me listen more attentively than almost any other performer has done.
I'm in ♥ with this piece!
The most beautiful Sonata of Beethoven, a piano piece spiritual
I wonder whether anyone has read the superb passage dedicated to this sonata in Thomas Mann's mighty novel Doktor Faustus. It is cast as a lecture by an admirable musician called Wendell Kretzschmar, and I will now try to transcribe it whole: .... Where greatness and death came together, he declared, there
arose a sovereign objectivity amenable to convention and leaving arrogant subjectivity behind, because in it the exclusively personal-which
after all had been the surmounting of a tradition carried to its peakonce again outgrew itself by entering, grand and ghostlike, into the
mythic and collective.
He did not ask whether we understood this, nor did we ask ourselves. If he thought the main point was that we heard it-why, then, we shared this opinion completely. And it was in the light of all this, he went on, that one must regard the work about which he was speaking in particular, the sonata Opus I I I. And then he sat down at the upright and played the whole composition from memory, both the first and the stupendous second movement, but in such a manner that he shouted out his commentary while he played, and to call our attention to a lead theme he would enthusiastically sing along by way of demonstration-all of which, taken together, resulted in a partly enthralling, partly comical spectacle, repeatedly greeted with amusement by the little audience. Since he had a very heavy touch and served up a powerful forte, he had to yell extra loudly just to make himself halfway understood and to sing at the top of his voice whenever he vocally underscored what he was playing. His mouth imitated what his hands were doing. Boom, boom-voom, voom-throom, throom-he struck the grimly vehement opening accents of the first movement, and in a high falsetto he sang along with passages of melodic sweetness, which, like delicate glimpses of light, now and then illuminate the storm-tossed skies of the piece. Finally he laid his hands in his lap, rested for a moment and said, "Here it comes." He began the variations movement, the adagio malta semplice e cantabile.
The arietta theme, destined for adventures and vicissitudes for which, in its idyllic innocence, it seems never to have been born, is immediately called up and for sixteen bars says its piece, reducible to a motif that emerges toward the end of its first half, like a short, soulful cry-just three notes, an eighth, a sixteenth, and a dotted quarter, that can only be scanned as something like: "sky of blue" or "lover's pain" or "fare-thee-well" or "come a day"·or "meadow-land"-and that is all. But what now becomes of this gentle statement, this pensively tranquil figure, in terms of rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, what blessings its master bestows upon it, what curses he heaps upon it, into what darknesses and superilluminations, where cold and heat, serenity and ecstasy are one and the same, he hurls and elevates it-one may well call it elaborate, miraculous, strange, and excessively grand without thereby giving it a name, because in actuality it is nameless; and Kretzschmar played all these stupendous transformations for us with hardworking hands, singing along very fiercely: "Dimdada, " and shoutiqg loudly over it all. "Chain of trills!" he yelled. "Fioriture and cadenzas! Do you hear convention abandoned? Here-language-is-no longer-purged of flourishes-rather flourishes-of the appearance-of their subjective-self-composure-the appearance-of art is thrownoff-for ultimately-art always throws off-the appearance of art. Dim-dada! Just listen, please, how here-the melody is overwhelmed-by the weight of the chords' joints! It becomes static, monotone--two Ds, three Ds, one after the other-the chords do that-dimdada! And now pay close attention to what happens here-"It was extraordinarily difficult to listen simultaneously to his shouts and to the highly complex music they punctuated. But we tried, bent forward, straining, hands between the knees, shifting our gaze alternately between his hands and mouth. The hallmark of the movement is, in fact, the wide separation between bass and treble, between the right and left hands, and a moment arrives, a situation of extremes,
where the poor theme seems to hover lonely and forlorn above a dizzyingly gaping abyss-an event of pallid grandeur, and hard on its heels comes an anxious shrinking-to-almost-nothing, a moment of startled fear, as it were, that such a thing could happen. And a great deal more happens yet before it comes to an end.
But when it does end, and in the very act of ending, there , comes-after all this fury, tenacity, obsessiveness, and extravagance-something fully unexpected and touching in its very mildness and kindness. After all its ordeals, the motif, this D-G-G, undergoes a gentle transformation. As it takes its farewell and becomes in and of itself a farewell, a call and a wave of goodbye, it experiences a little melodic enhancement. After an initial C, it takes on a C-sharp before the D, so that it now no longer scans as "sky of blue" or "meadow-land," but as "0-thou sky of blue,"
"green-est meadowland," "fare-thee-well, for good"; and this added C-sharp is the most touching, comforting, poignantly forgiving act in the world. It is like a painfully loving caress of the hair, the cheek-a silent, deep gaze into the eyes for one last time. It blesses its object, its dreadful journeys now past, with overwhelming humanization, lays it on the hearer's heart as a farewell, forever, lays it so gently that tears well up. "Now for-get the pain!" it says. "God was- great in us." " All was - but a dream." "Hold my - memory dear." Then it breaks off. Fast, hard triplets scurry toward a convenient final phrase that could easily conclude many another piece.
After that, Kretzschmar did not return from his upright to the lectern. He remained seated on his revolving stool, turned toward us, hands between his knees, in a position the same as ours, and with a few words concluded his lecture on the question of why Beethoven had not written a third movement to Opus I I I . We had needed only to hear the piece, he said, to be able to answer the question ourselves. A third movement? A new beginning, after that farewell? A return after that parting? Impossible! What had happened was that the sonata had found its ending in its second, enormous movement, had ended never to return. And when he said, "the sonata," he did not mean just this one, in C minor, but he meant the sonata per se, as a genre, as a traditional artform-it had been brought to an end, to its end, had fulfilled its destiny, reached a goal beyond which it could not go; canceling and resolving itself, it had taken its farewell-the wave of goodbye from the D-G-G motif, consoled melodically by the C-sharp, was a farewell in that sense, too, a farewell as grand as the work, a farewell from the sonata."
that passage lead me here. nice to see your comment.
Just read the novel! Thanks for the comment, it's a superb chapter!
speaking of literary references to this sonata E. M. Forster's young ingenue, Lucy, plays the first movement of this sonata with unwitting passion in "Room with a View. ' (chap 3).
@@jocelynripley3018 An unusually literary fertile piece, even among Beethoven's masterpieces.
From 7:42 to 8:00 is probably the greatest music I've ever heard from a piano
It is a very dramatic and masterful transition that always gets my attention.
The pianist's breathing certainly adds a new layer to this performance. : )
Happy 250th birthday Beethoven!
profound, transcendent, and celestial - came just from above this shitty world. I used to hear it when I was very young and rest all dreaming....
15:56 At this point, this section of Beethoven’s last piano sonata has a sort of tap-dancing feel to it, so it is in my humble opinion that this section is and should be known as the pre-ragtime or the proto ragtime section of the piece.
Terrific, complex, mysterious and emotionally deep.
It's funny that we tend to think of that simple development heuristic in the second movement as unpromising, and see and comment to that effect about several different pieces, but at the same time it really isn't hard to find very convincing and expressive uses of it as is the case here. In fact I've found that I have a particular fondness for composers who were known to do that, use "unpromising" themes and simple devices like dividing the beat by one more step each time, yet they were able to go with that and produce all of these moments for us listeners in which we have what are, to us at least, meaningful thoughts about life and about music.
It's so simple, and one could even say "pedestrian" what Beethoven is doing, but in the last variation here what's going in my head as the listener isn't simple at all. I don't have to be entirely sure how or why but it makes me terribly loathe to look at some method of composition as "bad", or e.g. to look at a weirdly shaped Brahms melody as ugly, because if it were really like that I wouldn't be sitting here wondering "how the hell did you do that" and "thank you" :)
In perusing so much of what you've shared over the years, it's gotten me to thinking about composition methods and a big part of this channel, in my experience, is taking the time to look through your reviews. So, from one longtime follower: I appreciate it and please keep it up.
Best interpreter of Mozart & Beethoven
That was nicely done. Bravo!
The drafts say the first movement's theme was to be what became the them of String Quartet no. 13. The original second movement in A-flat major, however, was abandoned, and the third movement became the first movement. After he created a second movement, Beethoven found a third movement was unnecessary.
i dont think anything could follow this movement.
Brilliant analysis.
Wow, glasklar gespielt von Mitsuko Uchida. Genial! 🤩🤩
15:56 - Beethoven invents Boogie Woogie, Blues and Rock 'n' Roll.
this was beethoven's last cry to God and him questioning if he has anything left in him, or if all his powers are gone
Um, no. After this came the Missa Solemnis, the Diabelli Variations, the Ninth, five incomparable string quartets, and, something that people don't often realize, a number of tiny but often marvelous songs and song adaptations, of which the best is the sublime Opferlied op.121b. Old Ludwig still had plenty to say, and God hadn't got tired of listening, either.
Beethoven is God himself.
@@fabiopaolobarbieri2286Beethoven is God himself.
@@ultimateconstruction You should listen to Bach's cadenza from his Brandenburg Concerto5 and hear Karl Richter execute it with precision
The arietta is sacred, holy, a Divine Vintage.
17:00 its the most abstract and beyond definition musical idea that I've ever heard in my entire Life.
All the entire vocabulary of mankind in all languajes is far to be able to explain It.
I just call it jazz.
@@owengette8089 but it's so much more
Uchida, one of the Great pianist
The beginning is so haunting
In 1821 died Josephine Brunsvik, Beethovens „Immortel Beloved“. She was ill since nearly two years. All he composed around this time was connected with her, and especially the three last sonatas. His love to this person you will find everywhere in his music over the years. And with the first notes in the 2. Mouvement one can easlly hear her name : Joo-se-phii -ne, Joo-se-phii-ne ,as in the Andante favori, in 1805 , in Liederkreis „ An die ferne Geliebte“ 1816 , or in many other pieces. The name of Josephine he puts into notes in many compositions. And for the last time in the NR. 6 of the „Bagatellen“ op.126.
This is heartbreaking
L émotion extraordinaire du lied an die geliebte (op 94 ?) Sert elle votre théorie ?
The first movement sounds little bit like bachian with the contrapuntal parts. the second movement however sounds very modern and swingy. i think the genius that is beethoven wanted to show the music that came before him and what could come after him combined in one composition. the sonata is great in itself
don't you think, it's the other way round and 21st century music sounds like Beethoven?
Great idea. Bach has always inspired the great composers. I can't explain the 2nd mov. unbelievable.
lol what are you talking about. It's derived directly from Mozart Adagio and Fugue in C minor for String Orchestra th-cam.com/video/PFXF0Aysh4w/w-d-xo.html
The allegro theme is clearly derived from Mozart's fugal subject. Beethoven even studied the score of Mozart fugue for two pianos K426, copied it down on score. (Hess 37)
@@jackjack3320 Beethoven was a good melodist and Bernstein can eat some poop. What do you think of that big boye
Great! thank you for posting
Beethoven jazz in 16:00 :)
Yes! It's incredible and so ahead of his time! :D
I am just reading Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann where this "Sonata 111" is mentioned, so I wanted to listen to it while playing ludo online, then when it passed 16:00 (or 15:55) I stopped throwing the virtual die and went to see the comments below immediately: It sounds like ragtime or something, does anybody else think the same, I wonder...
If it were played with a bit more funk it would almost sound like rag-time...
Ahm, no
Yeah, cool
No, this is better than Bach. Infinitely better. Thank you, LvB.
Splendido! Pagina grande
maravilhosa sonata!!!!!!!! vou compor algo assim daqui pra frente.
Pedro Henrique iae man quero ouvir suas composições. tambem componho
Seems to me that this piece anticipates the tone poem form, or the extended sonatas such as Liszt B Minor Sonata. In any case, I will bet that Liszt must have sounded great interpreting it.
Beethoven was way ahead of his time
Fantastica!
No doubt that this is a marvellous recording. I don‘t want to point out a critical point, but for all analysts and musicians: Uchida plays G natural instead of F sharp in bar 47 (end of variation II) on the third note, left hand bass. Listen here: 15:18
In all editions I have seen, the G natural in the bass (including the one shown here) comes on the fourth note in the bass. Is there an actual score version, where it is supposed to be like this?
At one point I saw the cosmos and the stars in the slow movement, and then i was brought back on earth.
Literraly the same feeling its actually insane
16:00 sounds almost like Ragtime. He was truly ahead of his time.
it IS ragtime.......Scott Joplin had obviously heard and liked it [and copied it]
19:56 is one of the most sublime things I've heard in my life.
The second movement is extremely moving 😢
Great Playing!!!
Beautiful ! Thank you for posting !
14:01 this variation reminds me of a cowboy galloping in the Wild West in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s. Beethoven sounds ahead of his time
The thing about the second movement which fascinates and kind of bewilders me in a way is that the chord progression Vi- V (a minor to g major) plays such a fundamental role in the theme (and therefore the entire movement). Obviously it's part of what makes the theme distinctive and what gives the return to C Major from A minor its remarkable, pure, ecstatic, reverential feel, but why does it work? In terms of music theory, that's not really a proper progression at all, being simply a stepwise move between two adjacent chords, and would normally require II between Vi and V. It should sound wrong and weird on paper, and yet in the hands of Beethoven it works perfectly.
The A minor passages serve as the "evil twin" of the C major theme. I.e., the theme is the peace we eventually discovered after decades of suffering, while the dark theme is what could have happened had we not striven so hard. It is extraordinarily threatening.
Une très belle interprétation de cette sonate Culte !
The end of the first movement sounds like chopin revolutionary etude
Chopin was heavily inspired by Beethoven music
Read the description
RIGHT AHAHHAA I FELL THE SAME OMG AHAHA
I like this Beethoven sonata....classic Beethoven
sublime on touche la perfection
colosal versión, espero complete el ciclo de las 32 sonatas o al menos registre la Appassionata y alguna otra.
art should transcend language - there is nothing you can say about this piece - words cannot describe it - it is complete connection with another human being - thankyou Beethoven - a friend I will never meet
That time Beethoven randomly switched to ragtime midway through the piece because he's Beethoven and he can
23:26 is the most satisfying moment in any piece of music, change my mind.
Yeah this is the part I started to play when I tried to approach this piece
I am no musical expert but I felt like beethoven was describing his anguish towards his deafness (middle part of this variation) but eventually found his relief (codetta)
It's just too beautiful
優れた演奏だと思います。
Abrumada por tanta belleza!
Here exactly is the jump from Classic to Romantic!
The Arietta is like jazz. Wow!