Most medical cases are too boring for an episode of a show like Chicago Med, House, M.D. or The Resident. Without the Affordable Care Act, figuring out how to pay for medical care might be much more dramatic than the actual treatment.
If you watch enough episodes of House, and you see an episode start with any kind of performance, you know that someone is going to fall sick and the rest of the episode is going to be about Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) trying to figure out what’s wrong with the patient.
Such is the case with “Half-Wit,” from the show’s third season. A talented young pianist, Patrick Obyedkov (Dave Matthews), is scheduled to play Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Opus 53, at a recital. The sonata is often referred to as “the Waldstein Sonata,” as Beethoven dedicated it “al Conte von Waldstein.”
You have to be really good to play that sonata. Sure, the first three bars are easy enough, I’d feel very confident playing just those first three bars in public. But after that, I’d have nowhere to hide mistakes. It starts with both hands in the bass clef.
Look how you have to take your right hand way to the right of middle C to accurately place it to play a grace note C-sharp. Without the fingering numbers, I’d probably try to play it with my index finger, which then with the descending phrase would turn out to have been a bad choice.
There’s something rock and roll to this sonata, like, are those power chords in the bass, answered by a riff in the treble? And then you have to bring your right hand back to the left of middle C. You pretty much have to cover the whole keyboard.
Patrick is up to the challenge. His proud father, stage dad Dr. Obyedov (Kurtwood Smith), presents his son to the audience. The father explains that
Twenty-five years ago, Patrick was in the fourth grade. A good student, played Little League. And then there was the accident. And here we are, raising money for people with similar neurological disabilities. I hope you enjoy the concert.
The father walks the son to the piano, pats him on the shoulder, and then walks offstage. Patrick starts playing, he gets through the first page with no problems. I’m going by Alfredo Casella’s edition, in which the first page ends with a fermata for a whole note, and a footnote about that fermata: Casella thinks the executed duration of the fermata should equal an odd number of quarter notes, like seven or nine, whereas Hans von Bülow thinks it should be two whole notes (eight quarter notes).
I couldn’t tell you which choice Patrick makes. But after that fermata, he runs into trouble. Maybe the audience doesn’t notice, but the father clearly notices and is very worried. Patrick makes another slight mistake, stops, recovers and resumes. The flurry of sharps to establish the dominant of E minor becomes a hopeless jumble and he stops on a chord that is clearly not what Beethoven meant at this point. Maybe Ives, but not Beethoven.
The poor fellow’s hand looks like someone bashed it with a hammer. Patrick needs to go to the hospital right now. We don’t get to see what happens to the audience. I don’t know if there were other musicians who were supposed to perform after Patrick. If the concert is over, then presumably everyone is understanding and no one asks for a refund.
Maybe Patrick was having a seizure. If the seizure had happened after the concert, then people would have heard Patrick play the Waldstein Sonata beginning to end flawlessly. They would have heard him play a transition from the nervous energy of the beginning to some very serene chords in E major that would not be out of place in a Bruckner symphony.
I can hear in my head woodwinds taking the right hand notes (maybe including high bassoons), horns playing the left hand notes.
Here Casella gives a metronome marking of quarter note equals 152, slower than the initial metronome marking of 176. So far I have been accepting Casella’s metronome markings without question, but this one I really wonder where it comes from.
If this was textbook sonata form, we’d be in G major at this point. But Beethoven is never one to go by the textbook too precisely.
A little later there is what some say is an example of Beethoven feeling chafed by the range of the pianos available to him. In a footnote, Casella gives the “correction” suggested by Bülow.
Originally, after this opening Allegro con brio, Beethoven had written an Andante, which presumably Patrick would not have played, instead proceeding to a rather brief Adagio molto. Casella does not include the Andante in his edition, not even as an appendix, instead referring the interested musician to Lebert and Cotta’s edition. So on to the Adagio molto, which also starts with both hands to the left of middle C.
I mistakenly omitted the pianissimo marking.
This Adagio molto serves as an introduction to the concluding rondo, which also starts with both hands to the left of middle C. But Beethoven expects the pianist to take his left hand to the right of his right hand to play a very sweet melody.
We know Patrick could have played it, if it weren’t for his ailment, because as Dr. House has Patrick loaded into the MRI and asks the patient to pretend to play the piano, we hear the Waldstein Sonata is still on his mind.
I do believe that’s Dave Matthews himself playing the piano in the episode. I haven’t heard anything of that performance besides what we hear in the episode. For the whole sonata, I’m turning to Su Yeon Kim.
I was going to embed a performance by Anna Górecka. Her most famous recording is one in which she plays piano in the piano version of her father’s Harpsichord Concerto. But her technique with Beethoven is not as certain. It’s not that her father’s music is objectively easier than Beethoven’s, but rather that the technical challenges are very different. Still, she plays both pieces better than I could.
I absolutely have to include a fortepiano performance, going with Ronald Brautigam for this one.
I mentioned earlier that Beethoven took the Andante favori out of the Waldstein Sonata, it was published posthumously as WoO 57. Stubborn as he was, his friends convinced him that the sonata was too long with the Andante favori in it.
There’s at least one rock cover of the Waldstein Sonata. This one has lyrics in Spanish added.
The main open thread question: What is your favorite interpretation of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major?
Also, do you think Beethoven was right to take the Andante favori out of the sonata?
