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Arne NORDHEIM (b.1932) Listen (1971) [10:17] Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Piano Sonata No.32 in C minor, Op.111 (1822) [25:16] Arne NORDHEIM Listen – Inside Outside (2005)* [12:00] Mats Claesson
(live electronics)*
Einar Steen-Nøkleberg (piano)
* rec. concert, University of Aula, Oslo, 14 October 2006.
Other venues and recording dates not stated. DDD. SIMAX CLASSICS
PSC1269 [47:38]
It is very
difficult to fathom the purpose of this CD. Prospective purchasers
wanting only Steen-Nøkleberg’s Beethoven would be better
served by the 2-CD set from which this sonata has been extracted
(PSC1218); in any case, they would be short-changed here,
paying full price for just 25 minutes of music. In fact the
whole disc is short value at less than 48 minutes: CDs of
Beethoven’s late sonatas usually weigh in at 60+ minutes.
Those wanting just the Nordheim, as the CD cover helpfully
points out, can find Listen on another disc entitled Mine
Musikkgleder – ‘My musical pleasures’, if my rusty Norwegian
serves correctly (PSC1134).
The cover is
hardly likely to attract the casual purchaser: a cardboard
sleeve in black and white, simply carrying the words ‘Nordheim
Beethoven Nordheim’ linked by some scrolling, in something
like the modified black-letter script one finds in old Norwegian
buildings and ‘Einar Steen-Nøkleberg piano’ in a more modern
font; even the titles of the works are not given, though
they are stated in a very large font on the back. The whole
thing forms a gatefold, with the CD in a plastic tray inside
the folds. I have previously expressed my preference for
this arrangement, which avoids the frequent problem of broken
plastic cases, but such gatefolds usually come with a shiny
dirt-resistant surface, whereas the matt white of this Simax
CD would, I imagine, easily become soiled. It certainly does
not look enticing for a full-price issue.
Einar Steen-Nøkleberg
is, as the booklet puts it, “reknown (sic) for his readings
of both the classical and the contemporary repertoire.” On
the basis of the Beethoven performance here and on the evidence
of the recordings of Grieg’s piano music which he has made
for the Naxos label – not mentioned by Simax, naturally – I
can concur: this is a fine interpretation. But why would
anyone wish to pay full price for one Beethoven sonata when
there are excellent alternatives? Those seeking a single
bargain-basement CD would find a recommendable version of
Sonatas 30-32 by Jenö Jandó on Naxos (8.550551). Better still,
for those prepared to tolerate well-re-mastered 78 sound,
Schnabel on Naxos 8.110763, enthusiastically recommended
here on Musicweb by Colin
Clarke in March 2005 and by Christopher
Howell in August 2005. Otherwise there are first-rate
2-CD mid-price couplings by Brendel, Kempff, Arrau, Ashkenazy
and Pollini.
Of course,
Beethoven’s music was regarded as revolutionary by his contemporaries
and this is especially true of his late quartets and late
piano sonatas. In the quartets he frequently establishes
tuneful passages which he then, as it were, throws recklessly
away and in the sonatas he not only explores the boundaries
of music itself in a similar way, exploring counterpoint
and variation in particular, he also pushes the instrument
itself to its limits – limits which were constantly being
expanded as technology produced instruments with greater
possibilities. (Ironically, of course, his progressive hearing
loss made him less and less able to hear these new possibilities.)
I am sure his contemporaries, including its dedicatee Archduke
Rudolph, would have been just as puzzled by his final piano
sonata as I am by the Nordheim works. Just to look at the
forest of notes in the score makes the would-be pianist quail – at
least this would-be pianist who never got beyond Grade 5!
(There is a wide range of Beethoven’s piano music scores,
including Op.111, at Sheet
Music Archive).
I know that
it is irrational of me to respond to Messiaen’s more adventurous
pieces and not to those of his pupil Boulez – a colleague
long ago used to drive me and most others out of the common
room by playing Le Marteau sans Maître – or to respond
positively to re-workings of older music by Respighi (Ancient
Airs and Dances, etc.) and Stravinsky (Pulcinella)
yet reject what Nordheim has done with Beethoven. And yet … I
find it hard to believe that much of today’s avant-garde
and experimental music will still be listened to in two hundred
years or that music-lovers like myself who are puzzled by
it will be regarded in the same light as we now view Beethoven’s
less enlightened contemporaries.
When I listen
to, say, Officium (ECM445 3692), on which Jan Garbarek
accompanies the Hilliard Ensemble in early music on the saxophone,
an instrument which the original composers could not have
dreamed of, I understand the ways in which a modern artist
is offering an alternative view of the music of the past
and I respond – in fact, I respond all too well to Officium,
a favourite of my wife’s, but a recording to which I can
listen only in small doses, because it moves me to tears.
With the Simax CD I have no peg on which to hang my thoughts.
As the Irish joke has it, if I were going there I wouldn’t
start from here.
Perhaps I might
have responded more adequately if I had been given more indications
of what Nordheim and Steen-Nøkleberg had tried to do, some
kind of guide which took me by the hand and showed me the
way. This is why I think it so deplorable that many bargain
CD reissues carry few or no notes: how can a new generation
learn what to look for if they have no guide? As it is, all
I hear is experimental notes and, in the electronic piece,
experimental sonorities – sounds which fail to add up to
music for me. The notes do not even indicate whether both
pieces are based on Beethoven: Nøkleberg’s note in which
he tells us little more than “I love Listen” seems to imply
that only the second work, Inside Outside, was thus
inspired. To tell me that this piece “feels unrestrainedly
exposed” does not really help me any more than does Nordheim’s
own note that he has made “little-regarded phenomena audible
and eventually accessible – in a similar way to Opus 111,
perhaps.” What a world of meaning lurks in that word “perhaps”!
To the suggestion that these phenomena (whatever they are)
have been made accessible prompts me to respond with the
last line of DH Lawrence’s poem ‘Bat’: “But not for me.” I
did try – I even looked on Simax’s web-page but found there
only the notes printed with the CD – but it didn’t work.
After all this,
it seems almost irrelevant to comment on Steen-Nøkleberg’s
Beethoven. His playing certainly justifies the praise included
with this CD and the high value which has been placed on
his recordings of Grieg’s complete piano music. For an appreciation
of his performances of the Grieg and of Sæverud’s music,
see Patrick Waller’s recent review
log on
this site and for the view that his participation
in the Simax recording of some of Tellefsen’s chamber music
is “quite superb”(see review).
His playing
at the start of Op.111 is about as maestoso as one
could imagine. In this opening section alone he shows himself
to be attentive to every change of mood from maestoso to allegro
con brio ed appassionato and to every dynamic mark, from pianissimo to
the fortissimo of the allegro con brio section,
all this while negotiating the most difficult fast two-octave
runs and other traps for the unwary. (How do you play a note
marked sfp?) Everywhere else the playing is of the
same high quality, right up to the wonderful diminuendo>pp ending
which still has the capacity to catch modern audiences out – is
that really the end? After that magical close, Listen-Inside
Outside totally destroys the mood.
The recording
is good throughout. If nothing else, I must allow that the
engineers have enabled the live performance of Inside
Outside to achieve its sonic intentions.
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Mats Claesson
(live electronics)* 
