Feats of expression and memory from a showman and living phenomenon
Daniel Barenboim: Beethoven Piano Sonata Cycle
Royal Festival Hall, London SE1
Ten years ago, Daniel Barenboim did the Beethoven "double", playing the five piano concertos and conducting the nine symphonies in six days. Now he has memorised the 32 piano sonatas, about 16 hours of music, and is playing them, not in order, but over eight concerts in 21 days in front of 2,000 people each night at the Royal Festival Hall.
Why does he put himself through such an ordeal? He surely doesn't need the money. At 65 he is still music director of the Berlin Staatskapelle and general music director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. He has also only just retired as chief conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and he runs the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which comprises Arab and Israeli musicians. It was in this capacity that he accepted a medal from the Royal Philharmonic Society after the opening concert, in a slightly embarrassing ceremony for which the audience had to be called back, as it had already stopped clapping and started to disperse.
He had just played Sonata No 29 in B-flat major, "Hammerklavier", and the huge adagio sostenuto had burned with less than the fiercest intensity. The finale's fugue had assumed a formal, academic tone and only the students in the penumbra of his limelight on the stage had stayed with every note.
The work had begun with a bristling, stately, come-all fanfare after the interval, and the ensuing allegro with its spiky, morose scherzo had promised a passionate contrast to the scintillating first half of the concert. Then he had played two earlier, less weighty works including No 18 in E-flat major, "La Chasse", discovering in its second movement a tune of such joyful and satisfying form over a lightly energetic bass that one had fairly skipped over the carpet to press drinks.
Before that, he had set out with No 1 in F minor, sharing the composer's excitement about the life journey he was embarking on in the bounding, light-hearted, upward trajectory of the main theme. The slow movement contained the core, and he stilled the crowd with the glowing chords, pausing on the dissonance of the cadence for an outrageously long time. Some wondered at the inter-movement coughing, but it was only the expulsion of breath from a hall that had been holding it in.
So it was a shame that the "Hammerklavier" did not work; but that is a risk when you play the sonatas out of sequence. Barenboim himself says the ideal is a chronological rendition mirroring the composer's life, each work an intimate diary entry, suffering, wrestling, musing and rejoicing when he does. To play the work in its chronological position would be to climb towards the pinnacle. Barenboim's programming aims for an early, middle and late work in each concert - which gives only some formal logic to his showmanship.
The second concert featured No 26 in E-flat major, "Les Adieux". Beethoven composed it for his patron Archduke Rudolf, who fled Vienna and Napoleon in 1809. If Beethoven thought His Imperial Highness a coward, it does not come across in the music, which, under Barenboim's expressive control, ranged from desolation to elation. Nothing he played was as bitter as his depiction of the pain of separation in the slow movement, "Absence". The rolling bass in the restrained first movement, "Farewell", felt like butterflies before a journey and the mail coach fanfares at the end proclaimed a hero's return.
Barenboim summoned through his fingers Europe's 200-year-old political turmoil, rocking his shoulders at moments of passion, mopping his brow during one-handed passages. In the first half he had played, with lyrical turbulence, No 17 in D minor, "Tempest" (after Shakespeare), and before that No 2 in A, proving his impressive technique with prestissimo scales. If any of them was not perfect, he always made up for it on the echo.
Barenboim is a god among mortals. His extraordinary feat of memory alone is worth witnessing. His intimacy with the score is so profound that obscure themes and relationships emerge from the shadows. A pity that in the opening concerts, the great "Hammerklavier" lacked impact; but blame the whimsical sequence. He saves the "Moonlight" until the penultimate night. Most will not attend the whole series, but even if you hear him only once, Barenboim is a showman phenomenon.
The piano sonata cycle ends on 17 February. For more information and booking details log on to: www.southbankcentre.co.uk
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