Richard Goode, piano

BEETHOVEN’S LAST THREE PIANO SONATAS 

Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major, opus 109 

Despite the tremendous advances made in piano construction during his lifetime, Beethoven always felt frustrated by the piano’s limitations. “It is and remains an inadequate instrument,” he told a friend in the last year of his life. Yet the piano was his own instrument and remained so even after increasing deafness, about 1809, made him unable to play it in public. Throughout his life, it was the conduit for his most personal thoughts, and in his last decade he returned to it for his final piano sonatas that launched the intensely visionary and experimental musical style of his late period. Now in his profound deafness, he could play upon the ideal instrument of his imagination. 

His mid-forties had been Beethoven’s most fallow creative period as he struggled with a multitude of illnesses and the infamous court battle with his “unfit” (in his eyes) sister-in-law Johanna van Beethoven for custody of his nephew Karl. Yet in 1817, he composed the piano-busting “Hammerklavier” Sonata, whose aggressive mood and scope may have reflected his embattled state of mind. By 1820, the custody suit had been decided in Beethoven’s favor, and though Karl van Beethoven brought considerable new turmoil into his life, the composer apparently recovered the serenity he needed for creation. 

Although he was already working on the most ambitious work of his career, the Missa solemnis, in May 1820 Beethoven eagerly accepted a commission for three piano sonatas from the Berlin publisher Adolf Schlesinger and rashly promised them in just three months. (Cash-flow problems at this time undoubtedly contributed to his eagerness.) He indeed made his deadline for the first, completing opus 109 in late summer 1820. But then renewed bouts of ill-health and work on the Missa intervened, and opus 110 was not finished until Christmas Day 1821, with opus 111 in C minor following in January 1822. 

However, if money concerns set Beethoven to writing his last three sonatas, the need to express himself fully before time ran out governed their expressive content. At 50, prolonged ill health had made him older than his years, and he knew it. The heroic sonata style of his prime no longer inspired him; in his late sonatas and string quartets, he expressed his most intimate thoughts, drastically reshaping the classical forms to suit them. 

The unusual opening movement of the very lyrical and subtle Sonata in E Major apparently began life as a separate piece and then was pressed into service when Beethoven received Schlesinger’s sonata commission. Its fleet opening theme is Schumann-esque in its improvisatory quality and sense of beginning in the middle of things. After just nine measures, Beethoven abruptly changes meter (from 2/4 to 3/4) and tempo (from Vivace to Adagio espressivo) for his second subject, a rhapsodic swirl of filigree and highly colored harmonies. He never sets up a conflict between these two highly contrasted ideas, but simply allows each to express its own mood. 

In E minor and an exceedingly compressed sonata form, the Prestissimo second movement is over before we know it. In one continuous surge of energy, this bounding music only pauses briefly over a little series of suspensions and soft chords before recapitulating its breathless course. 

As in so many Beethoven works, the weight of this work moves to the finale: a glorious theme with six variations. In its hymn-like theme, simply and beautifully harmonized, we experience the mood of spiritual acceptance and tranquility found often in Beethoven’s late works. He carries his ¾-time theme into several new meters and tempos, compresses it (variation three), then gives it an ethereal expansion with mysterious harmonies (fourth variation), and sets it in three-part counterpoint (number five). Finally, the theme returns in all its radiant simplicity to close this understated Sonata. 

Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, opus 110 

Written a year later than opus 109, the Sonata in A-flat looks forward to the Romantic era while simultaneously backward to the Baroque. Its lyrical and ardent first movement rejoices in the warm Romantic key of A-flat Major and in a gentle Moderato cantabile tempo. Though in sonata form, it totally forsakes the vigor and dramatic contrast of Beethoven’s earlier sonata opening movements. The principal theme opens like a reminiscence of the first bars of opus 109’s finale theme, also in 3/4 time. It later lofts into an aria-like melody for the right hand, spiced by subtle syncopations, that prefigures the finale’s big aria.  

By contrast, the Allegro molto second movement in F minor is a quirky little scherzo that might be a portrait of Beethoven himself in a very bad temper. Brusque chords — now soft, now loud — stalk by, sometimes tripping over each other in their impatience. The forward momentum is halted by odd little pauses, and the abrupt coda is a series of chords separated by more pauses, as Beethoven’s anger runs out of breath. 

Only a genius should attempt what Beethoven so magnificently pulls off in his finale for opus 110: a conflation of a tragic slow-movement aria with a Handelian fugue on the grandest scale. And one does not follow the other: the two are daringly intertwined. The music opens with a dramatic recitative in B-flat minor; Beethoven sprinkles new tempo/expressive marks into every measure to ensure the pianist plays with the passionate expression and freedom of a great singer. Then he slides into A-flat Major for an “Arioso dolente”: a poignant song of sorrow for the right hand (though it is Beethoven’s own suffering that is expressed, not an imaginary diva’s). The A-flat tonality is retained, but the mood and manner change suddenly into a dancing fugue in 6/8 meter and Allegro, ma non troppo tempo. After the fugue has been grandly unfurled, the Arioso returns, now more tragic in the extremely distant key of G minor. But the fugue theme, now in inversion, returns again, “gaining new life,” as Beethoven instructs. Augmentation and diminution of the fugue subject finally lead to its restoration, upright and in A-flat. From this audacious combination of freedom and rigor, of sorrow and rejoicing, Romanticism and the Baroque, Beethoven created one of his greatest sonata movements. 

Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, opus 111 

Beethoven’s sequence of 32 piano sonatas came to a glorious conclusion early in 1822 with the Sonata in C minor, opus 111. In the words of Beethoven scholar Lewis Lockwood,  it “gives every sign of being a self-consciously final statement.” After creating it, Beethoven set aside composing for the instrument that had occupied so much of his attention for three decades and turned to writing the Ninth Symphony and the late string quartets as well as completing the Missa solemnis. 

Along with the previous two piano sonatas of opus 109 and 110, the C-minor Sonata was commissioned by a Berlin publisher Adolph Martin Schlesinger. However, like many of Beethoven’s greatest and most challenging works — among them, the Missa solemnis, the Grosse Fuge for string quartet, and the “Hammerklavier” Piano Sonata — it was dedicated to Beethoven’s patron and pupil, the avid amateur musician Archduke Rudolph of Austria.  

Rather than the customary three or four movements, in the C-minor Sonata Beethoven opted for just two. But what all-encompassing movements they are! “Once again,” writes Barry Cooper, “Beethoven sets up a direct contrast — between stormy and gentle, fast and slow, C minor and C Major; even, according to some, between Earth and Heaven.” After the sublime second-movement Arietta, nothing further needs to be said. 

The first movement opens with an unsettling slow introduction marked Maestoso. A downward melodic plunge outlines a diminished-seventh interval, which is then reinforced by that most dramatic harmony of the era, the diminished seventh chord. All this is further intensified by the jagged rhythms. Though the dynamic softens to pianissimo, these rhythms and the dissonance persist disturbingly until this section closes, hovering over a rumbling in the bass. 

A crescendo and an acceleration then release the main Allegro con brio ed appassionato section in sonata form. It opens with a fierce, Beethovenian three-note motive, played in harsh octaves, that will be the movement’s signature. This eventually spawns a full theme with a striving, assertive character. Lockwood tells us Beethoven had two conscious models for this theme noted in his sketchbooks: the fugue subject in the “Kyrie” of Mozart’s Requiem and another fugal subject in his teacher Haydn’s String Quartet, opus 20, no. 5. This theme generates torrents of rapid runs in both hands. A slower, more poetic passage takes the place of a second theme. Those fugal origins of his principal theme inspired Beethoven to incorporate fugal passages in the dramatic but fairly brief development section. The closing coda calms the mood and brightens the key from C minor to C Major, preparing the way for the second movement.  

“Arietta,” the theme-and-variations second movement, seems to leave all the stress and struggle of earthly life behind and move into a transcendental, timeless space beyond human existence. The theme itself is of sublime simplicity and beauty; however, rhythmically it is most unusual, with a metrical marking of 9/16. In the four variations that follow, it will grow stranger still as Beethoven progressively subdivides the beat into smaller and smaller units leading to ecstatic textures that Maynard Solomon describes as “a shimmering sonic barrier that blurs any distinction between rapid movement and the depths of stasis.” The fourth variation floats between a grounded low register and a glittering, airborne high register.  

Throughout this procession of accelerating rhythmic figures, the harmonic motion has remained essentially static in C Major. Now, however, under a marvelously prolonged trill Beethoven begins to explore other keys before ultimately returning to C Major for a final radiant reprise of his Arietta theme over an accompaniment of fervent excitement. The trills, more disembodied than ever, return in the highest register as Beethoven brings his most visionary evocation of another world to a quiet, spellbound close. 

— Janet E. Bedell 

Janet E. Bedell is a program annotator and feature writer who writes for Carnegie Hall, The Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Cal Performances at the University of California-Berkeley, and other music organizations. 

Richard Goode has been hailed for music-making of tremendous emotional power, depth, and expressiveness, and has been acknowledged worldwide as one of today’s leading interpreters of Classical and Romantic music. In regular performances with the major orchestras, recitals in the world’s music capitals, and through his extensive and acclaimed Nonesuch recordings, he has won a large and devoted following. 
 
One of today’s most revered recitalists, Goode is a favorite of audiences in Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York, Houston, Portland and Chicago and numerous colleges and universities around the country. In Europe, appearances at Wigmore Hall, the Edinburgh Festival, Berlin, and throughout Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the U.K. are always highlights. His masterclasses, in person or online, continue to be hailed as truly memorable events. 
 
An exclusive Nonesuch recording artist, Goode has made more than two dozen recordings over the years, ranging from solo and chamber works to lieder and concertos. His recording of the five Beethoven 

concertos with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer was released in 2009 to exceptional critical acclaim, described as “a landmark recording” by The Financial Times, and nominated for a Grammy Award. His 10-CD set of the complete Beethoven sonatas cycle, the first-ever by an American-born pianist, was nominated for a Grammy and has been ranked among the most distinguished recordings of this repertoire. 
 
Goode served, together with Mitsuko Uchida, as Co-Artistic Director of the Marlboro Music School and Festival in Marlboro, Vermont from 1999 through 2013. Participating initially at the age of 14, at what The New Yorker magazine recently described as “the classical world’s most coveted retreat,” he has made a notable contribution to this unique community over the 28 summers he has spent there. He is married to the violinist Marcia Weinfeld, and, when the Goodes are not on tour, they and their collection of some 5,000 volumes live in New York City. 
 
To learn more about Richard Goode, please visit his website.