Extremes

I'm pleased that, quite some time ago now, I bought the big box of the Complete Piano Sonatas of Beethoven with Daniel Barenboim tickling the ivories. It's a treasury of extraordinary riches, so much so that I haven't come close to doing justice to listening to the contents, despite giving the CDs therein pretty regular spins.

Just lately I've developed a different way of approaching the sonatas having decided that just spinning a CD when I felt like it didn't really work. I now decide on a specific sonata, quite at random actually, and arrange to listen when I can concentrate fully. I don't let the CD in question run on to material that follows, but ensure I'm fully focused up to the last notes. This way I find I can just about cope with the extravagance of it all.

Earlier this evening, for example, Noi had popped out to see one of her chums for a bit of exercise at a pool somewhere so I banged on the No 7 in D, Opus 10, No 3 and, my goodness, it was a reminder of just how varied a single sonata can be. To be honest, I usually can't figure out at all for most of the sonatas how the various movements are supposed to comprise a unitary whole. In this case, it began with what struck me as a close to manic Presto opening, incredibly virtuosic, and quite lovely in little bits, and then abruptly switched to a slow movement that started as if directly referencing the depths of depression. The full twelve minutes of it was spell-binding, and the Minuetto following was also lovely in its own way. But the last movement was, again, oddly disconnected from what had just preceded it, to these poor ears at least.

What I am sure of, though, is that the strange bi-polarity of the first two movements wasn't just in my imagination. Brilliant certainly, but disturbingly so.