1st Movement: A Confrontation of Opposites

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來自 Curtis Institute of Music 的課程

Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas Part 3

41 個評分

Curtis Institute of Music

Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas Part 3

41 個評分

Welcome to Part 3 of Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas! I'm delighted to launch another set of new lectures of this course as Part 3. As before, this class is meant for people of all levels of experience with Beethoven's music (including no experience at all!). Remember that you are able to watch the lectures as many times as you like, at whatever pace is comfortable for you. As I’ve done with the first two sets of Beethoven lectures, I look forward to meeting with students—online and in person, in various cities. The dates and locations will be posted in the Announcements and Events section, as part of the course content. So please remember to check back there for details. In these four new lectures, we will explore the following sonatas: • Sonata Op. 10, No. 1 • Sonata Op. 22 • Sonata Op. 31, No. 2 • Sonata Opp. 78, 79, 81a The Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation supports Curtis’s lifelong learning initiatives.

從本節課中

op. 31 no. 2

Op. 31 no. 2: An Adventurous, Unsettling Masterwork3:04

1st Movement: A Recitative hat is not a Recitative; An Introduction that is not an Introduction7:28

1st Movement: A Confrontation of Opposites7:33

1st Movement: The Structural Lines Grow Blurrier7:23

1st Movement: And Finally, the Recitative!10:04

2nd Movement: Harmonic and Emotional Stability at Las3:20

2nd Movement: Evoking Voices and Instruments7:33

2nd Movement: Exploring the Piano’s Extreme Registers3:57

3rd Movement: A Slow-Moving Perpetual Motion9:34

3rd Movement: Anxiety and Ambuguity8:38

與講師見面

Jonathan Biss
Neubauer Family Chair in Piano Studies
Performance Faculty

So, after this remarkable second appearance of the largo – an incursion, really –

the allegro returns, and remains for the rest of the exposition,

which I will now play in its entirety.

This opening is so out of the ordinary, I couldn’t play it without immediately addressing it,

but let’s now hear it in a larger context.

(MUSIC)

So, given the way the piece begins, it shouldn’t come as a great surprise

that this is music of terrific tension and drama.

I mentioned how revolutionary it is that the beginning of the piece doesn’t given the

tonality: well, it doesn’t truly arrive for a very long while.

We do get it in the first allegro, but only in passing.

(MUSIC)

We have to go through 22 measures and two largos before we finally land, with

a vengeance, on the home key of d minor.

(MUSIC)

I feel the responsibility of really conveying how revolutionary

and destabilizing this is.

Beethoven avoided the tonic for nearly the entire movement in the first movement

of op. 101, which we’ve studied,

(MUSIC)

but that is a much later work.

For him to have withheld the tonic for 22 measures in the Tempest, written in 1802,

is to really ignore the rulebook.

And to do so while toggling back and forth between two tempi is to throw that rulebook

directly out the window.

So, when that d minor does firmly arrive, it brings with it another passage that exemplifies this

movement’s penchant for extreme contrasts.

The first type of music is firmly articulated, it outlines an arpeggio,

which means that the intervals are fairly large and open,

and it's very severe in character.

(MUSIC)

The response is soft, it's legato, it's composed of chromatic intervals, meaning that the notes

are as close together as they can be, and the character is pleading.

(MUSIC)

Short of varying the tempo, the way he did at the opening of the piece, Beethoven

has done everything he possibly can to make these two elements distinct from one another

– in confrontation with one another.

It’s a confrontation that the first type of music eventually prevails in.

(MUSIC)

This brings us to the second theme, which is every bit as nervy and driven as the first.

(MUSIC)

This is further evidence that the opening largo is in fact not an introduction,

but a part of the opening theme.

Because without it, the opening theme is really very similar in rhythm

and in character to the second one.

No, once we clear that second largo, the remainder of the exposition is VERY propulsive,

right up until the very end, and the repeat.

(MUSIC)

The first ending brings yet another dramatic transition, as that momentum stops –

the music disintegrates, really – and we return to the opening largo.

I suppose it's completely inevitable that it would be a part of the repeat –

in the Pathetique, remember, that was a very open question,

whether the introduction should be repeated or not.

But this exposition had a second largo within it;

why on earth WOULDN’T the first one come back in the repeat?

Still, when it does come back,

(MUSIC)

it becomes even more clear: that this bit of music,

whatever it is, this promise of a recitative, without the actual recitative attached,

this ghostly apparition, it's an integral part of the piece.

Very clear.

Clear as mud, really.

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