When one thinks of Beethoven, the first things that come to mind are the heroic tours de force bursting from each symphony and the piano sonatas that so many have come to regard as the meat of the classical canon. Only after these grand works does one mention the intimate side of Beethoven.
Yet as Till Fellner took the stage, it was immediately apparent that a different Beethoven performance was in store. The opening notes, a rocking melody in E major, begin an intensely personal message to the listener, straight from the composer to the audience, with Till Fellner as the catalyst. This message, a letter imbued with a masterful palate of emotion and color, was written through the night, closing with a painful farewell through a crippling conflict of stillness and movement manifested in an unending trill.
Beethoven’s late piano sonatas introduce us to a new man. The heroics of his middle period are still present throughout the music, but a new sense of structure begins to surface in his writing. By his late period, Beethoven was a man crippled both by hearing impairments and inspiration. He began to express himself through music differently, intimately linked to the structures of the past, but with extremely personal subjects. Just before his late period in 1816, Beethoven began an intense study of the music of Bach and Handel, two of the greatest Baroque composers of the 18th century. Consequently, many Baroque forms, most notably fugue and theme and variations, began to appear in Beethoven’s work.
The three piano sonatas performed by Fellner were no exception. Theme and variation movements closed two of the sonatas, with a fugue commanding two other movements.
Despite working with such a classical canvas, Beethoven paints with a new brush, contrasting within two measures the exposed delicacy of a Mozart sonata with the romantic gustiness of a Chopin ballade. Till Fellner seamlessly coalesced these two distinct styles through a unique technique; he picked each note off the piano as he would a grape from the vine. At some points, he was treating the piano almost like a violin, massaging each note, giving it the utmost care. The bare twinkling from the upper registers in Op. 111 shone through perfectly, in stark contrast with the deep rumblings from the lower register that Beethoven adored. Novice pianists, when playing Beethoven, often fall into the trap of letting the bass command the texture of the piece. However, Fellner grasped the contrast between the upper and lower sonorities with masterful skill, never letting the bass blur the delicate melodies woven with the right hand. Fellner also shaped the subtle countermelodies beautifully — countermelodies that are easily lost in passages with a thicker texture.
Although ripe with skill and endurance, Fellner wound up a bit short when asked for an inspired interpretation. The wonderful counterpoint conversation between the adagio and fugue in the third movement of Op. 110 was passed off as basic differing subjects; the return of the fugue, rather than transporting the listener to an entirely new atmosphere, simply seemed to reintroduce the fugue upside down. In many places, the notation was taken too literally, and little attention was paid to the entire message Beethoven was writing. Fortunately, the variations of Op. 109 and 111 let Fellner balance his skill and interpretation, which created a beautiful outcome.
The final three sonatas Beethoven wrote were compositional masterpieces, illustrating his complete and utter mastery over the forms. The sonata-form movements were brief and poignant, the variations were lengthy and innovative, and the variety of textures and motives were an accumulation of years of study and composition. These sonatas clearly exposed the history of music and the unique place Beethoven held between the classical and romantic periods.
Remembering Beethoven
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