 | No. 198 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast198 |
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Today’s
podcast features a performance of the three last piano sonatas composed by Ludwig
van Beethoven by pianist Stephen Kovacevich.
The
American pianist was known before 1975 as Stephen Bishop and then Stephen
Bishop-Kovacevich. According to his Wikipedia biography,
when his mother remarried, his name was changed to Stephen Bishop, the name
under which he performed in his early career. He later discovered that he was
often being confused with the singer and guitarist Stephen Bishop. To avoid the
confusion, he began performing as Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich and later simply as
Stephen Kovacevich.
Born in
California in 1940, Kovacevich made his concert debut as a pianist at the age
of 11; then, at the age of 18 he moved to London to study under Dame Myra Hess
on a scholarship and has been a London resident ever since, currently living in
Hampstead. In 1961 he made a sensational European debut at the Wigmore Hall,
playing the Sonata by Alban Berg, three Bach Preludes and Fugues and
Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. In 1967, he made his New York debut and since
then he has toured Europe, the United States, the Far East, Australia, New
Zealand and South America.
As a
soloist, he has frequently performed and recorded works by, amongst others,
Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Bartók.
Ludwig van
Beethoven's thirty-two piano sonatas - the mirror of his creative span -
explore, like the quartets and symphonies, dimensions of universal experience.
‘Unconventional, experimental' music of' ‘lofty spirituality' peopled by ‘many
different characters' was Hugo Leichtentritt's thumbnail sketch of Beethoven's
late sonatas. Ranging ‘from inferno to paradiso,' he told Harvard audiences in
the thirties, ‘their magnificent cosmic visions (Opp 106, 109, 111) have passed
beyond the appassionato and the Titanic phases into metaphysical depths, mystic
regions of a world beyond, [while] intermezzi of incomparable lyric beauty and
intimacy of utterance (Opp 81a, 90, 101, 110) tinged with melancholy sing of
the enchanting loneliness of the terrestrial world.'
The group
of three includes the op. 109 sonata, characterised by a free and original
approach to the traditional sonata form. Its focus is the third movement, a set
of variations that interpret its theme in a wide variety of individual ways. Op
110, an intricate forging of classical rigour and modern fantasia,
recitative/aria and baroque fugue, was completed on Christmas Day 1821. ‘A work
in every respect wholly excellent, extremely melodious throughout, and rich in
harmonic beauties,' (Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung).
Dedicated
to his patron and pupil the Archduke Rudolph of Austria, Beethoven's final
sonata, Op 111 (1821-13 January 1822), travels a Romantically-charged journey
from dissonance to concord, black forte G minor diminished-seventh homelessness
to white pianissimo C major repose, primeval darkness to celestial light,
earthly passion to heavenly pæan. ‘A summing-up of Beethoven's whole nature,'
believed the great Edwin Fischer, a spiritual testament symbolizing ‘this world
and the world to come.'
I think you will love this music too
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