It is always gratifying to hear an elegant playing of Beethoven's music by a master perfectionist. Or, as it were, mostly Beethoven, and mostly elegant. The program on Sunday, in Davies Symphony Hall, featured András Schiff in a performance of four Beethoven piano sonatas: Op. 10, Nos. 1, 2, and 3; and Op. 13. There was also a colossal encore, Bach's Partita in C Minor. Overall, the stylishness of execution was pushed aside occasionally by the abrasiveness of the piano tone in forte. Although this is what usually happens when a pianist slaps the keyboard with all his might instead of submerging into the depths of the keys, which produces a fuller, richer sound.
The concert was the second installment (of four over the next two years) of an entire collection of Beethoven’s sonatas that Schiff is presenting in San Francisco. The three sonatas of Op. 10, in C minor, F major, and D major, were squeezed into the first half of the concert, which lasted more than an hour. The fourth sonata of the evening, Op. 13 in C minor ("Pathétique"), was hardly sufficient to fill the second half of the program, but I am not complaining.
Schiff added an encore: Bach’s magnificent Partita in C Minor — the entire suite, no less. The partita, which is actually a longer piece than the programmed "Pathétique,"
was played with masterful precision and irresistible flair. Schiff moved with ease from the majestic opening to the heartfelt Sarabande and to the concluding droll Cappriccio, with its outrageous leaps and constantly quarreling polyphonic voices.
I am not convinced, however, by the programming idea that, since the three sonatas in Op. 10 are published together, they should be performed as a unified triptych that cannot be broken by an intermission. We attach too much significance to such unity. Moreover, I am not even convinced that we should sit in reverent silence between the movements of a sonata or a symphony, in order not to spoil the "unity" of the set.
Such subdued behavior was unheard of in the late 18th and 19th centuries, when the audiences were not as overwhelmingly gray-haired (save for the powdered wigs, of course) as they are today. The public reacted immediately to the appeal of a single movement, applauding and often asking to repeat a movement or two. In fact, composers and performers complained about a frosty reception if the audience remained silent between the movements. That was a sign of failure, dreaded by every performer and composer, from Haydn and Mozart to Brahms and Elgar. It was even common at that time to applaud individual variations in a variation set, just as we do today in jazz concerts.
Different Strokes for Different Folks
That was probably the reason why symphonies and concertos then were programmed in such a way that their movements were interspersed with other music. Thus, at the premiere of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, the soloist, Franz Clement, played some entertaining acrobatic pieces of his own production, at times with the instrument upside down. The movements of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony were separated by songs of Weber and Rossini in Paris of the 1830s, and a vocal quartet was performed between the movements of Chopin's E-Minor Concerto in Vienna of the same decade.
Some may argue now against the contemptible emphasis on lowly entertainment in that period, but the snootiness of today's protocol may be one of the reasons why classical music audiences are dwindling. (The gathering at the Sunday night concert, however, bucked the trend, which is typical in Davies Hall; the place was packed.)
Of the first three sonatas of Op. 10, the middle one in F major was the most successful. Its unexpectedly gentle opening was inviting, and Schiff progressed through the four movements with lyricism and impish humor. In the first, the C-Minor Sonata, the leisurely unfolding slow movement and the eerie finale were also winners. The first movement of the C-Minor Sonata was technically meticulous, but blazing drama is not Schiff's forte. The last sonata of the triptych, similarly, was executed with precision and elegance, but, at the same time, the pianist seemed to be less engaged than in the previous two pieces.
The last Beethoven sonata on the program, Op. 13 in C minor ("Pathétique"), was given a well-polished reading. Schiff’s remarkable contrapuntal clarity, expressive articulation, and refined fingerwork were indeed appealing. What I found objectionable, however, was the repeat in the first movement. In one of his interviews, Schiff mentions that he follows Rudolf Serkin and Charles Rosen insofar as the repeat of the exposition is concerned. Namely, when he repeats the exposition, he also repeats the slow introduction.
To Repeat … or Not
The main argument here is that the autograph of the score is lost, and we do not know for sure where the repeat sign originally was. Of course, the first edition of the "Pathétique," published in Vienna (Hoffmeister, 1799) and proofread by the composer, included the repeat sign
after the slow introduction. By contrast, in another Viennese edition of the same sonata (Haslinger, 1828) the repeat sign is absent, just as it is in a later Boston edition of Op. 13 (Oliver Ditson, 1876). The debate about whether a slow introduction should be repeated in Op. 13 is similar to that about Chopin’s Sonata in B-flat Minor, Op. 35, and its slow introduction.
But here is the clincher: In the 18th and 19th centuries, the presence (or absence) of the repeat sign after a slow introduction was irrelevant. Dozens of symphonies, quartets, and sonatas by Mozart, Haydn, Dussek, Hummel, and others were published in which the repeat sign after a slow introduction was missing. However, including the slow introduction into the expositional repeat was metrically impossible. In scores of Haydn's chamber music published in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in the same composition one part would include the repeat sign while in other parts the same marks might be lacking.
The publishers at that time were obviously confident that both amateurs and professionals buying and performing the scores were sufficiently educated to know that you simply did not repeat the slow introduction along with the exposition. (I can refer those who are interested in the subject to my article "Repeat With Caution: A Dilemma of the First Movement of Chopin's Sonata Op. 35,"
The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 3, Fall 2001.) The return of the Grave section in the "Pathétique" is a drama-killer. When Beethoven repeats parts of the Grave later in the movement, the material of the slow introduction transforms with every recall. A verbatim iteration stops the evolving drama dead in its tracks. I do hope that next time Schiff plays Op. 13, he will rethink his approach to the first movement.