Beethoven Critique

On Thursday November 3rd, the McGill Schulich school of music had a piano concert of which I attended. Continuing to uphold the McGill world-class excellence in music, the students played songs that featured many classic and romantic western pieces made by some of the most famous composers in the world such as Bach, Hadyn and Chopin Nonetheless, the piece that intrigued me the most was composed by Ludwig Van Beethoven and titled “Sonata no.27 in E minor, Op. 90”.
Beethoven wrote this song in the summer of 1814, his first piano solo in what appeared to have been four years (Kerman). During those four years, Beethoven was deeply depressed and emotionally perturbed; the Napoleonic wars were ongoing, devaluing the Austrian currency and influencing him financially and idealistically as well as a slow agonizing descent into deafness. However, during this year, he managed to successfully present the German opera Fidelio and received a significant amount of acclaim for it (Kerman). He was also under significant intellectual pressures due to the works other composers at the time, such as Haydn, pushing him to respond stylistically. As such, Beethoven was known to challenge normal musical norms and one such change can
be seen in the piano sonata in question: there are only two movements as opposed to the usual three. There was also a heightened sense of intimacy and delicacy found in his pieces during this reformative time, further demonstrating Beethoven’s constant endeavour for artistic innovation (Kerman).
Moving on to the work itself, the whole piece was dedicated to Prince Moritz von Lichnowsky and for the longest time was believed to reference the love life of the prince although this last bit has been purportedly disproven (Grove). The tonic of the first movement is in E minor from which the name of the piece derives and curiously the tonic of the second piece is E major, its parallel key. Having out of curiosity listened to both movements, there is a definitive change in emotive expression between the two movements; the first movement has a more dramatic and gloomy tone whereas the other is livelier and energetic. The movement that was played in the concert, the second movement, can be described as sonata form as there was evidently an exposition, development and recapitulation, all with a primary and secondary theme. Even the development borrowed elements and melodies from the exposition, causing some to consider it rondo form (Kramer). Even as the development modulates the key and begins to vary the tempo, the aspects of the former part come back into play.
Given that it is a piano concert and the song is a piano sonata, the ensemble is simply a solo modern piano.
Personally, I am not much of a fan of single instrument pieces and many of the following performances were not to my taste but this one stood out simply because I associated Beethoven with darker, dramatic sounding works more than a cheery themed one I heard instead. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the first movement as it sounded much closer to the themes and tonality I have come to expect with the German composer. I find that is song is a good example of Beethoven putting the groundwork for the Romantic era songs that were to come, particularly with the variable tempo or rubato that he employs during the development and emphasis on deeper
emotion. Overall, the concert experience again was another pleasing one as music is one of my passions and learning about the history and terminology associated with this art has given me a stronger drive to learn more. I enjoyed listening to the works that have led up to the music of today and seeing the drastic differences in both their styles and production. Something new that happened at this particular concert was being able to have a quick chat with some of the performers and asking them of how they felt while they were performing. One of such responses was the intense amount of nervousness and anxiety that many of them face, which is interesting since all the performers appeared immensely confident and in control while they played. I also noticed that for this concert, there was no sheet music whatsoever; all the performers memorized their ten to twenty-minute-long usually melismatic pieces which I find incredible. Going to more of these concerts is definitely something I will be looking to do again.