This finale is not a rondo, but rather a sonata form, and what's most unusual about it, from a formal perspective, is that the development is much longer than the exposition: generally speaking, the reverse is true. The tension in this movement is ever-present, but in this long development, it comes close – on more than one occasion – to boiling over. (MUSIC) There are pieces with longer developments than that one, to be sure, but it feels massive, given that the intensity is sustained throughout. Midway through this development, we reach a tremendous climax, long in the making. (MUSIC) But just as we arrive at the climax, Beethoven pulls the rug out from under us, not only returning to piano, but also to the displaced basses of the opening. (MUSIC) This is the movement’s emotional ambiguity in a nutshell: full of anguish, just barely held in check. The recapitulation proceeds accordingly – proceeding accordingly, even inexorably, is what this movement is all about – and it's capped by a substantial coda, which brings this just-contained music even closer to the edge. It begins with a seeming return to the development – it could almost be a repeat, for just a moment – but where the development immediately has snarling outbursts, this stays resigned, mournful, for much longer. Here again, is the opening of the development, (MUSIC) and now, the start of the coda. (MUSIC) If it seems like something is lying in wait: it is. (MUSIC) For the first and only time, the tragedy of the opening theme is not subdued, but rather, declaimed fortissimo. It is all the more devastating for having been held in reserve up until this point: most of the power of this enormously powerful movement comes from the great restraint it displays – most of the time. This is in evidence yet again in the work’s final climax, just bars from the end of the piece. Remember the moment from the exposition when the nonstop motion was briefly but memorably interrupted? (MUSIC) That moment is withheld from the recapitulation. This is important: it's a significant – I would say critical – moment in the exposition, and such moments don’t lightly get omitted from a proper recapitulation, which this recapitulation IS. From the moment Beethoven passes over it, we wonder, nervously, where it has gone... The end of the piece provides the answer. Having been withheld from the recapitulation, in the coda it returns with a vengeance. (MUSIC) When this happened in the exposition, it lingered first on an A, (MUSIC) and then on a D (MUSIC). Now in the return, it’s not just the A (MUSIC), and the D (MUSIC), but an F (MUSIC) – the top note of Beethoven’s 1802 piano. This sense of reaching further than he has before, to the very limit, in the search of some sort of relief, is truly devastating here. But after this final cry of anguish, the piece truly gives up, simply disappearing into silence. (MUSIC) Very unlike the finale of the Appassionata, this movement’s distant cousin, which ends in a blaze, in this finale, ambiguity and ambivalence rule the day: a tug of war between fight and resignation plays out until the bitter – literally bitter – end. Really, the Tempest is among the most totally striking and inventive of Beethoven’s sonatas. And like the Pathetique before it and several of the late works to follow it, it's another important step on the road towards the sonatas of Schumann and Chopin, and towards the loosening of sonata form generally. But its historical significance is, to me, a secondary matter: the Tempest’s combination of formal ingenuity and layer upon layer of character, means that it lodges itself into the listener’s psyche, and stays there long after it's over. In short: it is a great work of art.
