Celebrating Beethoven's 250th with a new, great recording!

Last year (2019), International concert pianist Beth Levin performed a wonderful recital in Maryland's Festival Baltimore. The program included a fantastic Baroque Suite by Handel, a provocative and beautiful new(ish) work by Swedish composer Anders Eliasson (1947-2013), and one of the greatest, most difficult, and colossal piano sonatas in the repertoire - Beethoven's Sonata No. 29, Opus 106, referred to as the "Hammerklavier" Sonata. It's often thought of as the Mount Everest of piano sonatas for both its technical and musical demands. One of the longest sonatas in the active literature, the Hammerklavier has not surprisingly gained a reputation of being extraordinarily challenging for pianists; for some it's unplayable. Indeed, it took the incomparable Franz Liszt, some decades after Beethoven's completion of it, to bring the Hammerklavier to the public.

A recital with these three works is not your average fare -- but Beth Levin's recitals (and impressive catalog of recordings) are rarely average. And she has gained a reputation for challenging the status quo in her interpretations, too. For Beethoven's Hammerklavier, it wasn't a matter of Levin being an iconoclast, but being committed to giving a deep, meaningful look at each movement of this extraordinary work, almost, you might feel, revisiting every phrase. Beethoven's late masterpiece holds endless riches in its many bars, some so deep perhaps we may never hear them revealed. But Beth Levin has brought so many of them to light. Most remarkably, she's made a uniquely hard work flow like water, and reveal some eye-opening lucidity, while shining its beauties and mysteries to a sparkle. Happy 250th Anniversary of being on this Earth, Ludwig van Beethoven, and endless thanks to you, and Beth Levin, for giving us the Hammerklavier Sonata.

Aldilà Records (Germany) has captured a fantastic recording of this wonderful performance and that CD is available to buy today, November 20. And if the Beethoven weren't enough, Eliasson's Disegno No. 3, "Carosello" is very much worth many listens, and the Handel Suite is truly and remarkably satisfying - in each, the performance is superb.

P.S. - Please support a great record label, Aldilà, and champion of the piano, Beth Levin, by getting a copy of this CD Hammerklavier Live (or MP3 download (Hammerklavier (Live)), available worldwide on Amazon). [I am extremely honored, also, to have been asked to provide the CD's liner notes for the Handel and the Beethoven, which is a celebration in its own right for me. (Thanks to Beth and Aldilà.)]

Here's an excerpt of the liner notes (and the links above may offer some samples of audio):

Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat Major, Op. 106, “Hammerklavier”

Late in his life, when Beethoven was asked which of his works he considered to be his finest, he singled out his Third (“Eroica”) and Ninth Symphonies, his Missa Solemnis, and his “Hammerklavier” Sonata (No. 29 in B-flat Major, Op. 106).  His choices make sense because what Beethoven most strove for in his art was not just beauty, but complexity and challenges, progression in the art – the “giving birth to God’s children,” as he said. And each of these works was indeed this kind of piece: [...] special pride was reserved for his massive Hammerklavier Sonata, however – it was the beginning of Beethoven’s last compositional stage, the so-called “giganticism” (or “third”) phase in length and breadth, in which he sought a more “Universal” and ennobling aesthetic. These were compositions that reached “beyond the canopy of the stars,” as he and the poet Schiller said, and which brought both his art and the music of the old masters into a new light. 

[...] Movement 3. Adagio sostenuto - Appassionato e con molto sentimento

... Though the Sonata explores the realms of symphonic writing, the third movement is more a towering testament to Beethoven’s ability to create deeply intimate music – almost disarmingly so. Its existence in this Sonata, which Beethoven has already established as epic in the first two movements, seems surprising. But the piano is the musical voice where Beethoven began – on which he learned music, with which he became one of Europe’s greatest virtuosos – and which remained his constant companion even in his deafness, its keys like codes to sound, its vibrations still “the breath of the Creator” humming through Beethoven’s marrow. Here is where Beethoven pens his musical version of his Heilengestadt Testament, pouring out his soul in pianistic sound, yet intimately epic in its own way. The theme for this set of variations that we first hear is perhaps wrought out of a deep sentiment that Beethoven scribbled in the sketches of the work: “… Longing or yearning, liberation or fulfillment…” The theme is gorgeous and lonely, and its variations deeply private, nearly speaking on a different plane of consciousness – arguably, there is little in the piano repertoire that approaches the magnitude and spirituality of this Adagio – making it one of the most sublime movements in Beethoven’s oeuvre. As a final touch, just before its publication some months after its submission, Beethoven sent along a last minute change, just as he had done with the beginning of his Eroica Symphony – he added two chords to begin the work, which, in both pieces, make for an uncanny difference. 

-Max Derrickson