Daniel Barenboim has been getting unprecedented praise over the past few weeks for his performance of all 32 Beethoven sonatas. Here is a review of the last recital:
Barenboim's Beethoven Will Resound for Decades: Norman Lebrecht
Commentary by Norman Lebrecht
Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- There were 3,000 of us who stood and cheered, and three days later we are still trying to understand. Veterans concurred that nothing of its kind had been heard in London since the heyday of Horowitz and Rubinstein.
Daniel Barenboim's concerts were no three-day wonder, no three-week wonder even. They will be remembered for decades. The editor of the Guardian newspaper today described the result as ``beyond perfection.''
After the final chord of Beethoven's 32nd piano sonata at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday, there followed 15 long seconds of complete silence before the audience leapt to their feet in ovation and the most riveting event of this musical century was declared closed.
In eight recitals over a span of three weeks, Barenboim had been playing the Beethoven sonatas in London as a single coherent entity and with intensity that has commanded attention outside the world of classical music. Barenboim, probably the only classical musician alive who can speak with moral authority on the great issues of the day, understands Beethoven as a composer of hope -- a man who perceives the world and its problems to be, with good will, surmountable.
This would have been reason enough for London to flock to his pulpit, given the leading role he has taken in promoting cultural and political dialogue in the Middle East. ``The Artist as Leader'' was how the series was marketed -- not that it needed any marketing. About 650 people bought tickets to the entire cycle, many of them on the day booking opened. Politicians of every color and leaders of media and industry were conspicuous in the audience.
Extreme Intimacy
Around 150 extra seats were crammed onto the stage, within three feet of the piano. This extreme intimacy added an extra dimension to Barenboim's concentration. From the opening notes, the hall shrunk to the size of a domestic living room.
There was additionally a sense that this event was unique and unrepeatable. Barenboim had declined a radio relay, explaining to one BBC panjandrum that London critics had not always treated him kindly in the past. In a cycle of this magnitude, played from memory, there were bound to be wrong notes -- indeed, there were. Nevertheless, the critical reception was, from the outset, overwhelmed by the Olympian ambition of the enterprise.
Barenboim, 65, first played the cycle in public as a teenager in Tel Aviv and has recorded it twice. But this was neither an athletic feat nor a commercial gift set performed for the sake of comprehensiveness. This was an artist at the summit of his powers approaching the music of life with both wisdom and humility.
Troubled Beethoven
Each program contained sonatas from the three periods of Beethoven's troubled life, early, middle and late. Each sonata was invested by Barenboim with a distinctive character.
In the final recital, the 9th sonata (opus 14/1) was marked by introspective restraint, the 4th (opus 7) was playful and exuberant, the 22nd (opus 54) moderately combative and the climactic opus 111 possessed of a visionary wildness that yielded at the end to a surreal calm.
This was beyond question a contemporary reading -- there were modulations in the opus 14/1 that would not have sounded out of place on a Radiohead album. But it was also an interpretation born of an innate understanding of the composer and his mind.
The closing melody of the opus 7 called to mind a hint of Beethoven's ``Choral Fantasia,'' itself a sketch for the Ninth Symphony, reminding us that everything written by this composer was hewn from the same gigantic mountain and with the same elevated message in mind.
Barenboim seemed to be playing, as the phrase goes, ``well within himself'' -- in the dual sense that he did not make large gestures and that he was preoccupied with interior thoughts.
Extreme Exertion
At certain points his exertion was so extreme that he would hold a chord with his right hand, pedaling heavily, while reaching with his left for a handkerchief to mop the sweat.
I cannot ever recall such sustained audience concentration in so large a space. The young man sitting next to me was attending the first piano recital of his life, drawn to the flame by an article he had read. He barely blinked an eye for two hours.
And when it was over, when the rumpled pianist in dark suit and black shirt returned one last time to the stage to greet his communicants on all four sides, he placed the stool beneath the keyboard and gently shut the lid. Will we ever hear its like again?
(Norman Lebrecht is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this story: Norman Lebrecht at norman@normanlebrecht.com .
Barenboim's Beethoven Will Resound for Decades: Norman Lebrecht
Commentary by Norman Lebrecht
Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- There were 3,000 of us who stood and cheered, and three days later we are still trying to understand. Veterans concurred that nothing of its kind had been heard in London since the heyday of Horowitz and Rubinstein.
Daniel Barenboim's concerts were no three-day wonder, no three-week wonder even. They will be remembered for decades. The editor of the Guardian newspaper today described the result as ``beyond perfection.''
After the final chord of Beethoven's 32nd piano sonata at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday, there followed 15 long seconds of complete silence before the audience leapt to their feet in ovation and the most riveting event of this musical century was declared closed.
In eight recitals over a span of three weeks, Barenboim had been playing the Beethoven sonatas in London as a single coherent entity and with intensity that has commanded attention outside the world of classical music. Barenboim, probably the only classical musician alive who can speak with moral authority on the great issues of the day, understands Beethoven as a composer of hope -- a man who perceives the world and its problems to be, with good will, surmountable.
This would have been reason enough for London to flock to his pulpit, given the leading role he has taken in promoting cultural and political dialogue in the Middle East. ``The Artist as Leader'' was how the series was marketed -- not that it needed any marketing. About 650 people bought tickets to the entire cycle, many of them on the day booking opened. Politicians of every color and leaders of media and industry were conspicuous in the audience.
Extreme Intimacy
Around 150 extra seats were crammed onto the stage, within three feet of the piano. This extreme intimacy added an extra dimension to Barenboim's concentration. From the opening notes, the hall shrunk to the size of a domestic living room.
There was additionally a sense that this event was unique and unrepeatable. Barenboim had declined a radio relay, explaining to one BBC panjandrum that London critics had not always treated him kindly in the past. In a cycle of this magnitude, played from memory, there were bound to be wrong notes -- indeed, there were. Nevertheless, the critical reception was, from the outset, overwhelmed by the Olympian ambition of the enterprise.
Barenboim, 65, first played the cycle in public as a teenager in Tel Aviv and has recorded it twice. But this was neither an athletic feat nor a commercial gift set performed for the sake of comprehensiveness. This was an artist at the summit of his powers approaching the music of life with both wisdom and humility.
Troubled Beethoven
Each program contained sonatas from the three periods of Beethoven's troubled life, early, middle and late. Each sonata was invested by Barenboim with a distinctive character.
In the final recital, the 9th sonata (opus 14/1) was marked by introspective restraint, the 4th (opus 7) was playful and exuberant, the 22nd (opus 54) moderately combative and the climactic opus 111 possessed of a visionary wildness that yielded at the end to a surreal calm.
This was beyond question a contemporary reading -- there were modulations in the opus 14/1 that would not have sounded out of place on a Radiohead album. But it was also an interpretation born of an innate understanding of the composer and his mind.
The closing melody of the opus 7 called to mind a hint of Beethoven's ``Choral Fantasia,'' itself a sketch for the Ninth Symphony, reminding us that everything written by this composer was hewn from the same gigantic mountain and with the same elevated message in mind.
Barenboim seemed to be playing, as the phrase goes, ``well within himself'' -- in the dual sense that he did not make large gestures and that he was preoccupied with interior thoughts.
Extreme Exertion
At certain points his exertion was so extreme that he would hold a chord with his right hand, pedaling heavily, while reaching with his left for a handkerchief to mop the sweat.
I cannot ever recall such sustained audience concentration in so large a space. The young man sitting next to me was attending the first piano recital of his life, drawn to the flame by an article he had read. He barely blinked an eye for two hours.
And when it was over, when the rumpled pianist in dark suit and black shirt returned one last time to the stage to greet his communicants on all four sides, he placed the stool beneath the keyboard and gently shut the lid. Will we ever hear its like again?
(Norman Lebrecht is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this story: Norman Lebrecht at norman@normanlebrecht.com .
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