A New Discovery, a New Performance: Music for Piano and Violin by Ludwig van Beethoven
Elizabeth Kramer
Ludwig van Beethoven. Sonatas for Piano andViolin, op.23 and op.30, no.2.Andreas Staier, piano and Daniel Sepec, violin. Harmonia Mundi: HMC 901919, 2006.
A
t first glance, Andreas Staier and Daniel Sepec’s new recording of three of Beethoven’s compositions for piano and violin is all about an instrument. The recording celebrates a violin that surfaced in the United States in 1995, after more than one hundred years of historical anonymity, a discovery that has led to extensive new research into the provenance of Beethoven’s string instruments.1 It appears very probable that the violin—which carries the composer’s seal and the initial “B” carved in its back—was part of a set of instruments given to Beethoven by Prince Karl Lichnowsky in 1801.2 Now restored and in the permanent collection of the Beethoven-Haus, Bonn, Germany, the instrument is being introduced to a wider audience through the present recording. Staier and Sepec’s new release features compositions that may have been premiered on the instrument over two hundred years ago: Beethoven’s early Variations on Mozart’s “Se vuol ballare,” WoO 40 (first performed 1792–93), Sonata No.4 in A Minor, 1. Michael Ladenburger, curator at the Bonn, bh, describes the discovery and acquisition of the violin in the notes to the compact disc. 2. Beethoven mentions the gift in the Heiligenstadt Testament of October 1802. See Kai Köpp, “Beethovens Violoncello—ein Geschenk des Fürsten Lichnowsky? Zur Provenienz der Streichquartett-Instrumente Beethovens,” in Beethovens Werke für Klavier und Violoncello: Bericht über die internationale Fachkonferenz Bonn, 18.-20. Juni 1998, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg, Ingeborg Maaß, and Wolfgang Osthoff (Bonn:Verlag bh, 2004), pp.304–53.
Beethoven Forum Spring 2007,Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 94–99 © 2007 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
BF_14.1.indd 94
9/12/07 3:09:23 PM
95 A New Discovery, A New Performance
op.23 (first performed 1800), and Sonata No.7 in C Minor, op.30, no.2 (first performed 1801–02). As much as the recording is about an instrument, it is also about performing practices, and as such it joins a rich tradition of historically informed interpretations on instruments from Beethoven’s time. Exemplars of Beethoven’s piano music on period instruments extend from Elly Ney’s 1965 recordings on Beethoven’s Graf piano of 1823 to, more recently, the ten-disc compendium of Beethoven’s keyboard works directed by Malcolm Bilson, in which he and his colleagues perform on nine different instruments (reproductions ca. 1780–1827), representative of different periods of Beethoven’s life.3 The last ten years have seen an increasing number of period recordings of Beethoven’s chamber music for strings. The Schuppanzigh Quartet has recorded the String Quartets, op.18, no.4, and op.59, no.3, using Beethoven’s own instruments, and Tabea Zimmermann and Harmut Höll have released a disc of music featuring Beethoven’s viola.4 Staier and Sepec’s new contribution brings together Beethoven’s violin and a Conrad Graf piano (1824) owned by the Beethoven-Haus. The two performers integrate the use of period instruments with up-to-date insights about early-nineteenth-century music making and a compelling musicality developed through years of experience in the field of historical performance.Their thoroughly invigorating interpretations are noteworthy, in particular, for wide dynamic contrasts and a diversity of musical articulations. Staier and Sepec’s attractive exploration of early-nineteenth-centuryViennese chamber music also sparks questions about the influence of violin technique, the violin bow, and piano choice on the representation of a historical soundscape. The three compositions selected for this recording are broadly representative of Beethoven’s early music for piano and violin. Composed between 1792 and 1801, they were most probably premiered at the weekly concerts of Prince Lichnowsky by Ignaz Schuppanzigh, the Viennese violinist best known for his interpretations of Beethoven’s chamber music during the composer’s lifetime.5 The “Se vuol ballare” Variations, published by Artaria in 1793, exude the carefree abandon of virtuoso salon music. As Beethoven acknowledged in a letter to the piece’s dedicatee, Elea 3. Elly Ney’s Beethoven recordings have been reissued as part of a twelve-disc set of her performances by Colosseum Classics (COL 9025–12); the 1994 recordings of Bilson and his colleagues were coproduced by Cornell University and Claves Records. 4. The recordings by the Schuppanzigh Quartet and by Zimmermann and Höll have been issued by Ars Musici (AM 1281–2 and AM 1350–2, respectively). 5. Kai Köpp, “Information und Interpretation,” Basler Jahrbuch zur historischen Musikpraxis 27 (2004), 101–21, esp. 115–16; Jürgen May, “Beethoven and Prince Karl Lichnowsky,” Beethoven Forum 3 (1994), 29–38; D. W. MacArdle, “Beethoven and Schuppanzigh,” Music Review 26 (1965), 3–14.
BF_14.1.indd 95
9/12/07 3:09:23 PM
96 e l i z a be t h k r a m e r
nore von Breuning, the published set was “a little difficult to play,” and Beethoven hoped that technical challenges, such as the trills in the coda, might trip up his rivals and counterfeiters.6 Staier and Sepec’s performance of these variations embodies this lighthearted and mischievous spirit. After the opening statement of the theme and legato first variation, the listener is introduced to the piano’s bassoon stop—a stop common to Viennese pianos built around 1800—in the forte second variation. Later, the strike of the Janissary pedal at the end of the unaccompanied ninth variation marks the climactic moment of the set. In the contrasting sixth through eighth variations, Staier and Sepec produce a beautiful piano dynamic, which never sounds enervated. Staier rolls his chords, providing a foretaste of the harplike texture that Beethoven would develop further in later works for piano. Although playing on a Graf piano, built some thirty years after the piece’s original performance, he maintains a light touch for this five-octave composition. Complementing Staier, Sepec selectively employs a beautifully expressive vibrato and maintains a lively tone throughout.The variety of articulations introduced by Staier and Sepec would have been sure to please the piece’s original late-eighteenth-century Viennese audience for whom musical diversity was paramount. Staier and Sepec perform the Sonata No.4 in A Minor, op.23, published in 1801 by Mollo, with a virtuosic careless abandon appropriate to a sonata that Beethoven’s student Carl Czerny wrote should be “extremely quick and by no means protracted . . . as the interest lies in the rapid flow of the music.”7 Czerny’s instructions, though written down at a later date and naturally not to be assumed as the views of Beethoven himself, do have the distinction of being written by a musician intimate with and deeply respectful of Beethoven’s ideas.The fiery opening movement is answered by a lighthearted Andante scherzando più Allegretto and then mirrored by a rousing Allegro molto finale. In the second and third movements, Staier and Sepec achieve a sustained legato—a character coveted by Beethoven according to Czerny—through sensitive phrasing.8 The timbral effect of the period-appropriate unwound gut strings on Beethoven’s violin is particularly striking in this resolutely minor-mode Sonata. The brightly warm timbres of occasional open strings—sounding after recording to approximately A = 428—augment a sonic canvas closer to that of the early nineteenth century than that encountered in today’s performances of the composition on “modern” violin. 6. As quoted in Thayer-Forbes, pp.163–64. 7. Czerny, On the Proper Performance of all Beethoven’s Works for the Piano Solo, Czerny’s “Reminiscences of Beethoven,” and Chapters II and III from Volume IV of the “Complete Theoretical and Practical Piano Forte School Op.500,” ed. Paul Badura-Skoda (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1970), pp.77–78. 8. Ibid., pp.5, 22.
BF_14.1.indd 96
9/12/07 3:09:24 PM
97 A New Discovery, A New Performance
In Czerny’s mind, only the “Kreutzer” Sonata could surpass the C-Minor Sonata, op.30 (published in 1803) in grandeur, and Staier and Sepec’s performance nobly reflects the magnificence of the composition’s four movements.9 The first movement dramatically spins out from its initial legato and piano opening theme as Staier and Sepec tastefully execute the sforzandos and strident chords that increasingly mark the texture of the movement. The early-nineteenth-century setup of the violin facilitates triple stops that match the piano’s chords in simultaneity of response and tonal warmth. While perhaps not as pearly in tone as earlier pianos, the 1824 Graf is preferable to the use of a “modern” concert grand; here, Staier takes advantage of the instrument’s wider tonal palette and, fortunately, finds a worthy match in Sepec’s command of Beethoven’s eighteenth-century violin. Nowhere is the tonal combination more elegantly rendered than in the exquisite vocality of the second movement, an Adagio cantabile. Sepec’s expressive vibrato warms choice pitches, as does his slight swelling and diminishing of tones, the singing tone and “light and shade,” so prized by violinists around 1800.10 The piano’s harplike sempre leggiermente thirtysecond notes (especially in the final nine measures, which, although not specifically marked thus, repeat the figuration earlier designated as such) toward the end of the movement are ethereally performed.The perky Allegro scherzo, with its grace notes, trills, and dotted rhythms, and the contrasting legato in triple subdivisions, gathers energy for the “wild” and “impetuous” Allegro finale.11 Staier and Sepec’s performance is thus musically invigorating and historically informed. The integrity of their performing practices is particularly appealing. Staier’s keyboard techniques seem to reflect early-nineteenth-century ideas, including Beethoven’s own thoughts as they appear in conversations and letters of the composer and his circle. Sepec’s practices resonate with historical descriptions of violin playing around 1800, especially the extant accounts of the artistry of Schuppanzigh.12 If the recording may be said to have an overtone, it is that of Schuppanzigh’s “beautiful tone and his delicately nuanced, humorous, very lively 9. Ibid., p.83. 10. See, for example, the chapter on tone and bow control in Leopold Mozart, Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule (3rd rev. edn. Augsburg: Johann Jakob Lotter, 1787); in A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing by Leopold Mozart, trans. Editha Knocker (2nd edn. London: Oxford up, 1951), pp.96–102. 11. Czerny, On the Proper Performance, p.82. 12. For an extensive consideration of the violin and violin playing around 1800, see Robin Stowell, Violin Technique and Performance Practice in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge up, 1985), and Stowell, The Early Violin and Viola: A Practical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge up, 2001).
BF_14.1.indd 97
9/12/07 3:09:24 PM
98 e l i z a be t h k r a m e r
performance.”13 In the absence of more extensive historical information, Sepec carves out an interpretation seemingly guided by the various traditions of violin playing of Beethoven’s day: the time-honored school represented by Leopold Mozart’s Violinschule, the new “springing style,” developed by Wilhelm Cramer in Mannheim (and idiomatic to much of the music of Haydn and Mozart), and the new French school, led by Giovanni Battista Viotti.14 The resulting style is particularly appropriate for the three works featured on the disc, which are much less influenced by French styles than are Beethoven’s final two Violin Sonatas, which, as is well known, were inspired by Viotti followers: violinists George Polgreen Bridgetower, Rudolphe Kreutzer, and Pierre Rode. It is unfortunate, given the project’s focus on Beethoven’s violin, that more is not said in the accompanying notes about the bow or bows used by Sepec for the recording. As the “soul of the instrument,” the bow has always played a pivotal role in the production of violin tone.15 Bow choice keenly affects articulations, the playing of chords, and general sound quality. It is true that we have very little information about the bows used in Vienna around 1800.Traveling virtuosos, such as Spohr and Rode, used new, modern Tourte bows, but we do not know much about the bow choice of Viennese violinists, such as Schuppanzigh. Although it may be assumed that many Viennese string players were employing what scholars have referred to as “transitional bows,” it is also possible that others were still using “long bows” from earlier in the eighteenth century.16 The incomplete nature of our knowledge may serve as a healthy reminder of the limits of the use of musical instruments as registers and determinants of musical style and vice versa. That said, the choice of the 1824 Graf piano as a counterpart to Beethoven’s violin is regrettable. Even given a focus on Beethoven’s newly discovered violin, the works presented in the recording are, after all, compositions for a five-octave piano with violin accompaniment. It is certainly true that Beethoven’s works have been performed on pianos built after their original dates of composition since the early nineteenth century and that Beethoven may have had very different tonal ideals in mind than the sounds yielded by the keyboards that he had at his disposal. The composer, however, spoke very highly of Anton Walther’s five-octave Viennese 13. AmZ 18 (1816), 423. 14. Clive Brown,“Bowing Styles,Vibrato and Portamento in Nineteenth-Century Violin Playing,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 113 (1988), 97–128. 15. J.-B. Saint-Sevin L’Abbé le Fils, Principes du violon pour apprendre le doigté de cet instrument, et les différens agrémens dont il est susceptible (Paris: Des Lauiers, 1761), p.1. 16. Most recently, see Robert E. Seletscky, “New Light on the Old Bow—2,” Early Music 32 (2004), 415–27.
BF_14.1.indd 98
9/12/07 3:09:24 PM
99 A New Discovery, A New Performance
pianos from around 1800, pianos that differ substantially from the heavier Graf pianos of the 1820s. One is left to wonder how the compositions presented here would have sounded on the piano of Beethoven’s choice. On the one hand, questions of bows and pianos may be minor points in the broader appraisal of the disc under review. Staier and Sepec’s well-produced album, with its exciting interpretations and historical sensitivity, is an important contribution to the repertoire. While there will probably be some listeners who continue to prefer the big sounds and bright timbres of performances of Beethoven’s music on “modern” instruments, it is unlikely that the recording will evoke many strong objections from a general musical public increasingly accustomed to an eclectic array of performing practices and mediums. On the other hand, perhaps, it is precisely the eclectic and sometimes ambivalent tendencies of our critical endeavors today that might motivate our attention to matters of historical instruments and to the historicity of all music performance. Staier and Sepec’s new recording is to be commended as an introduction to the most recently discovered of Beethoven’s violins and as a musically and historically invigorating performance. May the discovery and performance inspire more discoveries and performances in the years to come.
BF_14.1.indd 99
9/12/07 3:09:25 PM
Contributor Notes
Sarah Clemmens Waltz is assistant professor of music history at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Her recent dissertation, The Highland Muse in Romantic German Music (Yale University, 2007), examines the inspiration that German Romanticism drew from Celtic Scotland; her work has been supported by Jacob K. Javits and Andrew W. Mellon fellowships. William Drabkin, professor of music at the University of Southampton, received a special citation from the Society of Music Theory in 2005 for his English-language editions of the writings of Heinrich Schenker. He is currently completing a transcription of Beethoven’s sketchbook Artaria 197. Elizabeth Kramer is an assistant professor at the University of West Georgia, where she teaches courses in music history, world music, and strings. Her publications and scholarly interests lie in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music and aesthetics, performing practices, and jazz. John Moran teaches at the Peabody Institute. He has contributed to the revised New Grove Dictionary of Music and is the author of a monograph on the history of cello playing for Yale University Press (forthcoming). Stephen Rumph is assistant professor of music history at the University of Washington. In 2004 the University of California Press published his Beethoven after Napoleon: Political Romanticism in the Late Works; he is completing a second book for the Press, Mozart and Enlightenment Semiotics.
BF_14.1.indd 100
9/12/07 3:09:25 PM
