SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Daniel Barenboim and the Beethoven Piano Sonata cycle: Second concert and ‘Artist as Leader’ discussion, Royal Festival Hall, London 3.3.2008 (JPr)


This recital was the second in Daniel Barenboim’s Beethoven Piano Sonata cycle and it was followed by his participation in the first of the ‘Artist as Leader’ talks associated with this cycle of eight recitals ending on 17 February. It was supposed to be the second talk but the previous night Barenboim had suffered food-poisoning and the event had been cancelled. Some discreet coughing into a handkerchief during the recital suggested that he was not as well as might be hoped, though as the consummate artist that he is, neither  his playing nor his later self-deprecating introduction to the role he plays in world affairs showed any sign of further problems.

Daniel Barenboim claimed that he has ‘No role other than what I feel and think. In two years it will be 60 years since my first public concert and it is a wonderful feeling that people will still come to hear me and maybe they will care about the things I care about.’

This is his third Beethoven Sonata cycle. The first was in 1967, the second in 1977 and he played his first one in Israel when he was only 17. For those not attending all the concerts - such as myself -  Barenboim noted in the programme that ‘Each (recital) has a late sonata, where there is one, a major early sonata and a middle one’ indicating that he would have preferred a chronological order ‘but the programmes are not really well balanced when you do that.’

Piano Sonata No.2 in A, Op.2 No.2 from 1795 is one of three dedicated to Haydn who inspired Beethoven to move from Bonn to Vienna. No.2 is notable for the way we see Beethoven already treating his musical materials more as motifs than themes. The first movement opens with arpeggios and scalar figures that seem to be a series of questions being to be answered. The expressive Largo with an accompaniment like a pizzicato double bass, sounded like a ticking clock or a heart beat and not for the last time one felt here that this is a song without words. The Scherzo was more playful before an energetic Rondo Finale where again  - and not for the last time -  Barenboim’s impeccable dexterity, made the music sound as if there were more than two hands playing.

Piano Sonata No.17 in D minor, Op.31 No.2 (Tempest) has an uncommon key and a stormy opening followed by repeated slow and fast music of quieter lulls and more squalls. The name is not Beethoven’s but was a result of him saying  -when asked what this work was about -  ‘Just read Shakespeare's The Tempest’. During the playing I felt a quiet in the Royal Festival Hall (that was filled to capacity) that I had not experienced before. It was only during this movement that I became apparent how Barenboim had to counter the difficulties posed by having short arms in the demanding overhand stretches to the extremes of the keyboard. Following the volatile opening,  the Adagio in a major key (B flat) is sombre yet eloquently hypnotic. In the Finale a sense of improvisation returns and after a period of calm almost unrelieved semiquavers and an insistent four-note theme  - considered by some to have been inspired by a horseman galloping past Beethoven's window -  a certain turbulence returns before a quiet conclusion.

The improvisatory feeling in much of what Beethoven wrote in these sonatas, was mirrored by the fact that Barenboim was surrounded by an extra 150 members of the audience on the platform. This feeling was equally clear from his performance manner : he was happy to begin the concert's second half before everyone had completely quietened down from applauding him as he walked on.

He began with the undoubtedly joyful Piano Sonata No.10, Op.14 No.2. In the Allegro Beethoven plays tricks with rhythm and metre and the work features one of his more elaborate development sections. After the return of the opening music, the movement ends in a mood of contentment. The Andante is a set of variations on a simple, staccato theme which gives a more march-like impression though the sense of the  ‘song without words’ is never far away. It ends with an attention-grabbing dramatic final chord that generated immediate applause. The unusual Finale is a pastoral-style Scherzo, in Rondo style that allowed Barenboim to revel in the unshowy bravura of his pianism so much so that his face, which had been a mask of concentration throughout, lit up with a fleeting smile.

In Gustav Mahler's early musical career he performed Piano Sonata No.26 in E flat, Op.81 (Les Adieux) during his graduation recital in college and it is believed to be quoted in the Adagio from his Ninth Symphony so I had been looking forward to hearing this for the first time. This sonata has genuine extra-musical inspiration: the escape from Vienna of his patron Archduke Rudolph who fled along with the entire nobility and their entourages in anticipation of Napoleon’s army invading the city. Beethoven was therefore understandably indignant when his publisher, with an eye on the international market, insisted on giving the sonata a French title, Les adieux, rather than the German Lebewohl (Farewell).

Beethoven began the first movement of this sonata in May 1809, just after the Archduke had gone and a matter of days before Vienna was besieged. During the siege Beethoven sheltered in a cellar with a pillow over his head to protect what hearing he still had. The remaining two movements were composed in January 1810, following his patron's return. The dedication reads: ‘On the departure of his Imperial Highness, for the Archduke Rudolph in admiration’ though a private dedication in the sketches refers to the sonata as being ‘written from the heart’. The work reveals the basic emotions of this ‘farewell-absence-return’ and begins with a descending three-note figure that represents Le-be-wohl. I did not immediately recall having heard that in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony and will listen again more closely next time to see if it is really there.

In the first movement, the Farewell motif provides the material for both the first and second subject groups of the main Allegro, and an obviously programmatic element to the music. Here the music is more frantic than before but with delicate scampering runs as though someone is departing over the horizon. In the second movement, 'The Absence' Barenboim brought out an almost Tristan like yearning to music that expresses grief and consolation in two contrasting themes, much anticipation leads straight into the joyful 'Reunion' of the Finale.

This third movement is in sonata form and depicts the arrival of the Archduke and his imperial family, returning to Vienna on 30 January 1810. People of the city were overjoyed. This is heard at the beginning, when the piano sounds almost like a trumpet announcing that royalty is approaching. The third movement also describes the French army withdrawing their bloody siege on the 20 November 1809, and how happy the people of Vienna were to see the carnage over. In the helter-skelter virtuoso passages you can hear galloping horses. The real reason that the movement is so uplifting is that the Archduke returns to Vienna. The last movement of Les Adieux is the triumphant part of the piece which served as a relaxation from the first and second movements. This reveals Beethoven’s magisterial mature symphonic writing skills all of which were fully realised by Barenboim mature artistry.

Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas span about 28 years of a 30 years composing career. Mozart and Haydn had made this form of music into a staple of Classical expression and Beethoven transformed it, bringing it out of the eighteenth-century and bridging the gap between his distinguished predecessors (though he overlapped chronologically with his teacher Haydn) and nineteenth-century Romanticism. He originally wrote works for his pupils to play until, with increasing deafness, playing the piano was his only way of 'hearing' music at all, and his emotions are there for every other listener. Many commentators consider that Beethoven's way of communing with the soul through his keyboard is unsurpassed and that he communicates through music things that had never been said before in this way. For 'Beethoven',  you can almost read 'Barenboim' too as this recital performance was the culmination both of a life that began 65 years ago and his striving to to counteract ignorance through art, as he explained later.

The 'Artist as Leader' Discussion

What followed the recital however, was one of the worst examples of a national institution trying to justify its existence and counteract the ‘classical music is elitist’ brigade. It was one of series of talks devised to have Barenboim apparently draw ‘on his own experiences to consider how artists can become leaders in tomorrow’s society’. But while Helena Kennedy QC and Jude Kelly, artistic director of Southbank Centre, stuck gamely to their brief, Barenboim was having none of it and repeatedly said ‘he was no way political’ and did not consider himself a leader. He explained how ‘all great artists either project out to the auditorium or bring the auditorium on to the stage. Artists cannot be leaders of society and can only be leaders by how they practice their art.’

Added into the mix was the theatrical veteran, Sir Peter Hall, who blames politicians for their lack of finance for the Arts,  and Tony Benn who seemed to be there for another debate entirely. He absolved politicians from their lack of interest in the Arts and just had to tell us once again how his mother was a suffragette and always read the Bible to him.

Barenboim was however compelling when he talked about his early life in Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the West-Eastern Divan project and orchestra. He considered the conflict as a ‘human’ one that ‘eats me up daily’. He talked about his ‘existential friendship’ with the Palestinian Edward Said who he described as a "man of immense culture:  he was a writer, very good musician, who played piano better than some amateurs … and some professionals! The quality that inspired me was that he had the capacity to think in music and he gave me the highest compliment as he told me 'when you play one gets the feeling your fingers think '.

He knew much more about literature than I do and I knew more about music. It was only after 1967 that we both became aware in our different milieus that the conflict couldn’t be ignored. He became politically active much earlier than our first meeting, I’m still not. If there was anything I could transmit to him about the conflict it would be the atmospheric condition in which I grew up. I was inside and he was outside in the US. My family moved to Israel in 1952 and didn’t want to hear about Jewish history of the twentieth century, they were just concerned like everyone there on building, 3 years after the war, not only a homeland but an actual state, to “make gardens out of the desert”. Only later did I become aware of the pogroms, of places that did not exist anymore or names that had been changed. I believe the destiny of the peoples – Israeli and Palestinian – is inextricably linked and there is no military solution.’ "

Barenboim considers the mindset to have been as follows ‘Jews have been dispersed throughout the world for 20 centuries, sometimes treated well and sometimes badly. The little strip of land we occupy is the one place where we will not be persecuted because we are Jews. The Palestinians counter this by thinking ‘In the First World War 85% living there were non-Jews and only 15% Jews so why since 1920 must we accept Jews from countries throughout the world who want this land for themselves. The question is how do we get out of this impasse?’

In January 2008, Daniel Barenboim was given Palestinian citizenship for his promotion of cultural exchange and is believed to be the first person in the world to hold both Israeli and Palestinian passports. He noted how the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is ‘flatteringly described as an orchestra for peace when at best it is an orchestra against ignorance. If the idea of the orchestra had been rational it wouldn’t have succeeded. I have learnt a lot of facts about how they think in the occupied territory; music is devoid of the milieu the players grew up in. In the West-East Divan for some it is not only the first orchestra they have played in – it is the first orchestra they have heard! They learn that you have to play music existentially and play for your life. The first time I played at the Festival Hall in 1956, it was a Mozart Piano Concerto under Josef Krips who stopped the second violins in rehearsal and told them “Mozart is aristocratic or plebeian but never bureaucratic!”

And Barenboim’s explanation for the lack of funding for the Arts in this country and throughout the world is a lack of education in schools at all levels in culture – literature, music and art. (This is something I have also written about in my small way for many years.) He also blames technological developments for shortening the next generation’s ability to concentrate. For him any pianist can play any piece ‘but they will not have the patience to read through and learn it.’

In conclusion, Barenboim seemed much humbler than he has any right to be and was extremely thought-provoking.  But I am forced to ask why this short event (lasting only 75 minutes) was not a free event, if the South Bank believes its own proselytising agenda.  There was an exorbitant charge for ordinary members of the public of £12 – OK if some charity was involved maybe. None was mentioned other than, presumably, the Southbank Centre's own coffers.

Jim Pritchard


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