Music Chamber

This is the first concert in Simon's Beethoven Sonata Cycle.

 

Programme: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827)

Simon Watterton studied at the Purcell School of Music with Patsy Toh, and at the Royal College of Music with Yonty Solomon. At the RCM he won a number of prizes, including the Marmaduke Barton Piano Prize, and the annual Beethoven Competition. In his final year he won the Hopkinson Silver Medal at the Chappell Medal Competition, where he was also awarded the Esther Fisher Prize for best undergraduate performance. In his final recital he achieved the highest mark in his year, for his performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations. Simon is a regular recitalist at venues across the UK. Past appearances include performances at Wigmore Hall, St. John's Smith Square, St. Martin's In-the-Fields and Kettle's Yard, amongst others. In 2005 he won the piano prize at the Haverhill Sinfonia Soloist Competition. In May 2006, as result of further competitive success at the Marlow Music Festival, he performed Mozart's Piano Concerto in A Major, K488, at Cadogan Hall, with Southbank Sinfonia. Simon is a current Concordia Foundation artist. He has recently been studying with Martin Roscoe, and lives in London.

 

The three sonatas op.2 were composed in 1795, soon after the young Beethoven had left his home town of Bonn to further his career in Vienna. The first, dedicated to Joseph Haydn, is the shortest and asserts immediately his individuality and range. Strangely for a four movement work of the period, all of the movements are in the tonality of F – three in the minor and the second in the major. The first recalls the finale of Mozart’s Symphony no.40 in G Minor, and this is indeed the most ‘Mozartean’ of all his sonatas. He had briefly taken lessons with Mozart as a boy of twelve, but by the time he reached Vienna, in 1792, Mozart was dead and so instead Beethoven turned to Haydn. The op.2 sonatas are dedicated to Haydn and throughout show his influence most consistently. An example can be found straight away where the rising arpeggio of the main theme is reversed and played in an opposite style to serve as the second subject. Haydn was a master at using small ideas and building his movements around them, whereas Mozart frequently introduced new and unrelated themes. The abrupt and stormy first movement is followed by a languid second movement in F Major – again there are hints of Mozart, perhaps in the peotic minor section. The minuet and trio is followed by the Prestissimo finale, full of youthful violence. This is the most virtuosic movement and gives us a hint of Beethoven’s famed skill as a pianist. The work closes in the minor with no conciliatory movement to the major.

 

The sonata in A Flat Major op.26 shows Beethoven entering a new phase. Written in 1801, the work has four movements, none of which are actually in sonata form. One could say this was the first sonata of Beethoven’s middle period – in this same year he wrote the two sonatas op.27, which include the ‘Moonlight’, and op.28, the ‘Pastoral.’ Again each of the movements is in the same tonality. The first is a theme and variations. After a wonderfully melodic opening Beethoven uses the full range of the keyboard to present five variations each contrasting in touch and texture. Throughout the work Beethoven is very exact with his dynamic instructions, and the subtleties of nuance and shade are maintained throughout. After an energetic and exhuberant Scherzo and Trio comes something unique in Beethoven’s sonata output, a Funeral March. This work was the only sonata that Chopin publicly performed, and his fondness for it manifested itself in his famous Sonata in B Flat Minor, which has a famous Funeral March of its own. The subtitle of Beethoven’s march is ‘On the death of a hero’. Who that may have been is open to debate, but it is most likely a descriptive title and not a homage to a contemporary. Interestingly Beethoven orchestrated this movement for brass and winds, and it was performed at his own funeral. In the middle we can hear what may be drum rolls and trumpets, although they have also been descriptively described as canon shots. The finale again influenced Chopin, who wrote a similarly unpreposessing finale for his sonata. The great German pianist Edwin Fischer described this as being: “…like autumn rain falling quietly on the grave.” The subtleties of melody and harmony make this a difficult movement to play, and there is no dramatic ending, just a quiet dying away. This is not a work written for effect.

 

The Sonata in E Minor was written in the summer of 1814 and was dedicated to Count Moritz von Lichnowsky. This could be described as the first of the late sonatas, and contains many of the elements which characterise Beethoven’s final offerings for the piano. The work consists of only two movements, and there is an apocryphal story that the work is a battle between the head and the heart. The first movement is abrupt and brusque and any lyricism is often curtailed by heavy chords and clangerous sonorities. The second has been called ‘conversation with the beloved,’ and is completely different, a beautiful melody dominating which returns five times. The end is particularly interesting – the sonata seems to evaporate into thin air. Beethoven was the first composer to dispense with the ‘frame’ around his works which was a part of the classical ideal. As this work seems to melt away, with no obvious invitation to applaud, so the next sonata he wrote, Op.101, begins, tentatively, in the wrong key. These techniques heavily influenced the Romantic generation of composers. At this point in his life Beethoven was seeking a greater definition in his instructions on how to play his works, hence the German indications at the opening of each movement. Perhaps this search for clarity had to do with his by now almost total deafness, but he soon abandoned the practise and returned to Italian markings.

 

The Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op.53, dedicated to Count Waldstein, is considered to be one of Beethoven's greatest piano sonatas, as well as one of the three particularly notable sonatas of his middle period (the other two being the Appassionata sonata, Opus 57, and Les Adieux, Opus 81a). The sonata was completed in the summer of 1804. The work has a scope that surpasses Beethoven's previous piano works, and notably is one of his most technically challenging compositions. The score is unabashedly exuberant in its bravura, yet it has the soul of a poet, as can be heard in the beautiful slow movement which links the first and the third. Beethoven originally wrote a larger scale slow movement, but was persuaded that it was too long and imbalanced the work – its pensive quality seems to perfectly complement the movements either side. The opening Allegro con brio is marked by thematic material of a highly dramatic character. Beethoven constantly explores the range of the piano, the opening being a good example, where low chords are contrasted with an answer high in the register. The principal melody of the Rondo: Allegretto moderato finale is like a sunburst - at once positive and sweeping with a sense of musical inevitability. Count von Waldstein was one of Beethoven’s staunchest supporters. He had known the composer for many years, and when Beethoven left Bonn for Vienna to study with Haydn, had written: “…you will receive from Haydn’s hand the spirit of Mozart.” It is fitting that such a generous and worthy patron is remembered through one of Beethoven’s finest works. Also worth noting is the subtitle by which this piece was known in France for many years -  'L'Aurora' (The Dawn).

 

Programme Notes by Simon Watterton