Goodyear may be the first who plays Beeth. Hammerklavier Sonata No. 29 properly
I got Stewart Goodyear's recording of the Hammerklavier sonata
because I was told that this recording may may be the first proper recording
of that sonata at all.
The Hammerklavier sonata has a nimbus as the most unplayable one
of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas.
The splendid Beethoven pianist Emil Gilels recorded it digitally for DG
nearly 50 years ago with a most horribly sounding piano.
Just because it happens to be called "Hammerklavier" by accident,
there is no reason for the piano to sound like treated with a metal hammer.
Moreover, Gilels completely failed in giving the Hammerklavier sonata any
meaning. Although I think that the Hammerklavier sonata is the greatest work
among Beethoven's last five piano sonatas, Gilels recording does not make any
sense and leaves the listeners with the idea that the Hammerklavier is just
an ambitious phony show off. I am a big fan of Gilels, but I think that this
recording of the Hammerklavier sonata is simply the most ridiculous recording
he ever did; in particular the fugue is an absolute failure.
Gulda failed as well. Many more serious pianists were sufficiently wise
not to record the Hammerklavier sonata at all. Moreover,
this sonata is not the deepest of Beethoven, but just his most ambitious one.
"Chutzpah", as Goodyear calls it in his own notes, may be the right word.
The Hammerklavier sonata has four movements. The first starts with a fanfare
for which Beethoven gave the proper, but surprisingly high metronome tempo.
Goodyear, just like Artur Schnabel in his recording of 1935,
is one of the very few who gets the fanfare right. While Schnabel keeps the
high tempo exactly, Goodyear becomes slightly slower during the movement,
which is not good, but also no problem after establishing the proper idea
byt giving it fast enough at the beginning of the first movement.
Then comes a short scherzo with a bit too many notes by Beethoven. The only
function of the scherzo seems to be to give the listeners a rest before the
sonata leaves any previous traditions.
The third movement is the most creative and greatest one in the Hammerklavier
sonata. The tempo is Adagio moderato, which Schnabel still plays too slow, after
playing the Molto moderato in Schubert's last sonata still a bit too fast.
Goodyear gets exactly the right tempo and needs over three minutes less than
Schnabel. While this movement becomes slightly boring in Schnabel's
interpretation, with Goodyear it is all mature richness and copiousness of the
old Beethoven, a level of exuberant beauty never reached anywhere else.
Many people feel that this movement would be infinitely sad and desolate. It was
even called a a "Mausoleum des Kollektivleids" by Wilhelm von Lenz.
Of course, I would also suffer if it is played so horribly slow that it takes
20 minutes (as sometimes is the case) instead of Goodyear's 15 minutes.
While I have very strong feelings, which I cannot express in words, when
listening to this movement with Goodyear or Sviatoslav Richter,
nothing like sadness or depression can be found among them.
Well, you have to have such feelings sometimes in life,
but not in music, except of course, for some sad Lieder, say
in Schubert's Winterreise or in Mahler's "fahrenden Gesellen".
After a Largo introduction, the last movement slides into a fugue in Allegro
risoluto, falls back for a moment and then gets a completely fugal, polyphonic
movement with pari passu independent voices to be played with sufficient rubato
to recognize them as individual ones. Only Goodyear satisfies the demands of
this fugue. Sviatoslav Richter occasionally falls into harmony dominating the
primacy of the voices. Schnabel produces a muddy noise where only occasionally
the actually written notes can be identified. Schnabel was never a over-virtuous
pianist, but always a musician of deepest, clearest, and prophetic understanding.
His recording of the fugue surpasses his abilities as a pianist by far,
unless the recording equipment of the year 1935 completely went disfunctional.
From the overall concept of his interpretation of the fugue,
Schnabel seems to be similar to Goodyear,
but from his recordings of the other late piano sonatas of Beethoven,
one must say that he is not such a skilled fugue player as Goodyear is.
Summing up, Goodyear's ingredients to his Hammerklavier are quite earthly:
---a young pianist with very quick fingers who knows what a fugue is.
Actually, Goodyear plays fugues excellently and realizes also fugues
in two-voiced fugues which others mistake to be a main and a second voice.
---just follow Beethoven's metronomes, in particular right at the beginning,
because tempo is most crucial for the ueberbau here.
---do not mix into the fugue any interpretation in the style of the Viennese
school or even of Early Romanticism, but just play it in the style of Bach,
but, at the same time, however following Beethoven's shockingly ambitious notes.
That's it.
No one imho ever played this sonata so well. The ability to realize fugal
composition and to play it fugal in the metronome of Beethoven may be the key
abilities of Goodyear that gave him the chance to top all other recordings.
I do not say that this is a divine recording where everything nothing can be
improved. It seems, however, to be the first one that makes perfect sense and
meets Beethoven's ambitious intentions.
Moreover, it is indeed one of the best recent Beethoven recordings.
Future interpreters ought to start from this interpretation;
this is in particular viable because Goodyear puts in all the human intuition
that this music requires, but does not even try to put in his own aspects as a
composer, say, as the composer and most gifted conductor Furtwaengler has done
with Beethoven's symphonies, violating the metronome by a factor up to 4.
Thank you Mr. Goodyear for teaching us about your crucial ideas!
