According to a source I cannot remember the Sonata lasted 55 minutes when
played by Liszt.
This is much slower than some modern performances.
Rainer
Am 08.09.2020 um 01:09 schrieb howard posner:
On Sep 7, 2020, at 1:19 PM, Rainer <rads.bera_g...@t-online.de> wrote:
Even List could not play the Hammerklavier Sonate at Beethoven's metronome
markings - if they are meant as they are today.
Hector Berlioz seems to indicate otherwise in an 1836 review of a Liszt concert
in the La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris:
"Liszt has explained the work in such a way that if the composer himself had
returned from the grave, joy and pride would have swept over him. Not a note was
left out, not one added (I followed the performance with the sheet music), not one
alteration was made in the tempo that was not indicated in the text (….) It was the
ideal performance of a work with the reputation of being unperformable. Liszt,
in bringing back a work that was previously not understood has shown that he is
a pianist of the future.”
This quote is from "Early Performances of Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata
op. 106 in France and England” by Marten Noorduin:
https://www.ripm.org/cnc/?p=592
Here’s a different translation:
"A new Oedipus, Liszt, has solved it, solved it in such a way that had the composer
himself returned from the grave, a paroxysm of joy and pride would have swept over him.
Not a note was left out, not one added . . . no inflection was effaced, no change of
tempo permitted. Liszt, in thus making comprehensible a work not yet comprehended, has
proved that he is the pianist of the future."
I haven’t seen the original Berlioz article in French (and it wouldn’t do me
much good if I did).
The real problem with Beethoven’s metronome marks is that they were ignored in
the early 20th century, and by time the early music movement got to Beethoven
there was a performance tradition going back a few generations, and zillions of
recordings establishing an accepted range of tempi. Some of them worked even
though they were ridiculously wrong as a matter of performance practice: the
Allegretto second movement of the Seventh Symphony played as if it were a slow
movement comes to mind.
If I’m not mistaken, the Hammerklavier was the only piano sonata Beethoven
published with metronome marks. There are far more of them in the orchestral
works. Roger Norrington, in his recordings of the Beethoven orchestral works,
adhered to the metronome markings, and often offers explanations of them in his
written notes.
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