The New Listener/The Year of Beethoven

The Year of Beethoven review, in English via Google translate

translation by Gil Reavill

The Year of Beethoven

Admittedly, the Beethoven year 2020 was quite disappointing. Where there are no concerts, there is no lack of recordings, especially in the field of piano music. Some ventured into complete cycles which, as is usually the case, are rarely completely satisfactory; others played smaller selections, but most of them consist of the well-known works. There was a lot that was good about the recordings, but nothing really new that would shape our view of the anniversary boy. One stuck to the conventions, with the tried and tested, and did not undertake to look outside the box. The big exception is the CD with Beth Levin, which presents the Hammerklavier Sonata in B flat major op. 106 in a live recording.

To want to publish a work like the Hammerklavier Sonata as a live recording nowadays almost seems like madness. Because how is one supposed to master this mammoth work with a length of about 45 minutes and peppered with technical and musical hurdles continuously at a reproducible level? Or should we see it the other way round: does one even have to let it come from a single source in this way in order to achieve unity and develop overall musical meaning?

From the first note, Beth Levin shows herself to be one of the most independent, spirited and confident pianists of our time. She has her own voice on the piano and always remains herself, so you can identify her immediately when listening - and this is more than extraordinary today. Levin permeates the music intellectually as well as human, focusing on the uniqueness of the performance and the experience of the music. She does not reproduce the music as a retelling or reporting, but - fully involved itself - as happening in the moment, irreplaceable, and in this way breathtaking. If necessary, she intervenes in the musical text; however, none of the changes are arbitrary, but only serve the consistency and entirety of the performance. Every note sparkles with fervor and liveliness, with a personal statement. Technique, dexterity and virtuosity are in the background, they are only necessary (albeit perfectly controlled) means of transport for expression.

Projected onto an impulsive work such as the Hammerklavier Sonata, completely new facets and aspects of this masterpiece are revealed that cannot be described and can only be heard audibly. Unimaginable magic exudes above all the Adagio movement, in which we sometimes completely lose the feeling of time and space like the ground under our feet and are only carried by the fragile style of the music. "Stay awhile, you are so beautiful", Mephisto only needed to play this sentence to Faust - but the music has already been processed and the moment has passed, which here is responsible for a certain resonant melancholy like hardly anywhere else.

The rapid sentences are no less captivating. The marginal movements pack with impulsive accents, wildly arcing and yet restrained cascades of sound and bitter contrasts that Beth Levin carefully balances and stretches to the limits, but never beyond. The little Scherzo, on the other hand, seems almost too short, but it is precisely in the fleetingness that the joke lies and Beth Levin triumphs over this effect of the all too ephemeral.

The program is completed by two contrasting works from other eras: Handel's D minor Suite and Eliasson's Disegno No. 3 with the title “Carosello”. The D minor suite appears very simple, clear and open, Levin plays the music of the under-represented Bach contemporary with the deepest honesty and sincerity. Far less stormy than with Beethoven, it conjures up a completely different shine on the music conceived for the harpsichord, sonorous and yet fragile in its delicacy. With Eliasson, Beth Levin shows an unprecedented sense of harmony: the Swedish composer, who died in 2013, created his very own tonality model, impenetrably complex and not intellectually understandable - but musically penetrable, as is shown here. And actually the score suddenly becomes understandable when listening and we follow the course of the harmonic structures as a matter of course. With a perfectly refined touch, Beth Levin also brings out the most subtle nuances from the keys, colorful and versatile. She always has the entirety of the piece in mind and so she guides us safely through the many entanglements of each of these pieces, so that we can experience them enchantingly in their entirety. [Oliver Fraenzke, January 2021]