Now that Donald Drumpf’s dumme Tariffen have been struck down by the Supreme Court, it’s time to ask the question, ¿was kostet ein Hammerklavier? Well, the tariff chaos will continue to affect piano manufacturers and many other businesses, because beer aficionado Brett Kavanaugh made sure to write a dissent that gives Trump suggestions to keep the chaos going.
So piano manufacturers are not breathing easy just yet. Piano beginners and music schools are “the trade war’s hidden victims,” according to a report by Cullen S. Hendrix for the Peterson Institute for International Economy.
For the musical instrument industry, the effects have been more or less what one would expect in a tariff-battered, high-inequality economy: The entry-level instruments that beginners and school music programs depend on have taken the biggest hit, even as global demand for higher-end US-made instruments remains relatively stable.
Most of the instruments for American beginners are made in China, Indonesia and Vietnam. Beethoven probably never played an instrument made in any of those countries, but even in his time there was much importing and exporting of musical instruments.
John Broadwood, a Scottish immigrant in London, joined the family and business of Burkat Shudi in the 1760s, according to the company’s history. By 1774, Broadwood was exporting harpsichords to throughout the European continent, as well as to Russia. Also to the British colonies in America.
John’s son, Thomas, toured Europe in 1817, and the following year he sent Beethoven a grand piano that became strongly associated with Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat major, Opus 106, nicknamed the “Hammerklavier” even though the previous sonata (which we discussed last week) was also inscribed as being “für das Hammerklavier.”
This is the worst Beethoven piano sonata to listen to on YouTube. Since it’s his longest in duration, you’re practically guaranteed to have your listening interrupted at the most sublime moments to tell you that Hertz rental cars are new or that Draft Duel is calling all thrillionaires. Though I suppose I prefer that to the ads saying I should leave all of my thinking to A.I.
Right from the beginning, Beethoven gets a big sound by fairly simple means.
At least it does look simple the way I’ve presented it. In the edition by Alfredo Casella, there are four footnotes before you even get through the first full measure.
One footnote addresses the problem some pianists might have hitting that low B-flat fortissimo securely with the left hand and then also hitting those left hand B-flat major chords fortissimo and securely.
Casella offers two possible modifications, one of which is to play the low B-flat with the right hand while the left hand stands by to follow up with the B-flat major chords. But of course that means you have to quickly get your right hand back to its usual side of middle C quickly and accurately. The pianist strives to overcome these and many more technical challenges in music that expresses a great striving of the soul.
The very short Scherzo is second. The very first time I heard I thought that someone should orchestrate this.
It’s not shown in the example, but this sheet music gives another indication Beethoven did not intend hairpins to mean crescendo or diminuendo. In the very next measure after the one shown here, we see the abbreviation “cresc.” instead of a hairpin broadening out to the forte in the measure after that.
Beethoven switches to B-flat minor and later to Presto. Then there’s one of those passages like we saw in the previous sonata where the rhythm is deliberately notated vaguely. In a footnote, Casella quotes an “erroneous rhythmical version” given by “several old French editions.” In the next footnote, Casella quotes Bülow’s edition as “the best dynamic and pianistic interpretation of this passage.” This is a transition back to the beginning of the Scherzo.
The Adagio presents a practical challenge to a would-be orchestrator.
With this unexpected switch to F-sharp minor, should the orchestrator have the clarinetists switch from clarinets in B-flat to clarinets in A? And then have to switch back to B-flat clarinets for the finale?
If the introductory gestures of the finale look daunting, they’re but preparation for the complex 3-voice fugue that follows. I can think of other examples of fugue subjects with trills (they really help the listener keep track of which voice has the subject) but having the trill at the beginning of the subject really ups the ante for the performer.
In an earlier open thread, lineatus recommended Hélène Grimaud for “Beethoven anytime, anywhere,” and mentioned having just seen Marc-André Hamelin perform the Hammerklavier Sonata in San Francisco.
Long ago I made the choice that I wanted Yuja Wang for this open thread. There was a recent controversy with her, all I want to say about that in this open thread is that she was put in a tough position and not given any good options. To read and comment on that, please see my article from last week. Comments about her Beethoven interpretations, please post those here.
She’s a phenomenal pianist of great technical expertise with tremendous stamina who once played all the Rachmaninov piano concertos in one concert. The only criticism I have of her, and it’s a very mild one, is that she hasn’t played Beethoven’s less famous sonatas, or even some of the most famous. But not every pianist has to like Beethoven. Apparently Vladimir Horowitz didn’t either, and he only recorded like two more Beethoven sonatas than Yuja Wang has so far.
Her recording of the Hammerklavier runs 44 minutes. But the interpretation doesn’t feel slow, even compared to pianists who get through it a good five minutes faster. If the video gets interrupted to tell you about Walter Goggins’s glasses and goggles, that’ll feel like it drags on forever, whereas her playing breezes by.
I like Valentina Lisitsa’s interpretation, but at times she seems to take the “Hammer” part of the nickname almost too literally, particularly in the first movement.
For some strange reason, YouTube gave me a very hard time finding a performance on fortepiano. Finally I tried the searches “Hammerklavier Brautigam” and “Hammerklavier Zivian” to find Eric Zivian’s performance.
Before I undertook orchestrating the Scherzo of this sonata, I did a search, and discovered that Felix Weingartner orchestrated the whole sonata. It’s presumably Weingartner’s own recording that’s been made into a score video on YouTube.
Weingartner deals with the F-sharp minor of the Adagio by having the clarinets switch to clarinets in A, but doesn’t have them change back to B-flat clarinets until the fugue of the finale begins.
American music critic David Hurwitz regards the Weingartner orchestration as “horrible.” Compared to some other critics of late, I find myself having more respect for him.
Hurwitz says it is possible to successfully orchestrate piano music, but remarks that Edvard Grieg was smart enough to leave some things out of the Holberg Suite. With the Hammerklavier Sonata, it is perhaps best to not try to orchestrate the fugue of the finale.
