Letting the music speak for itself

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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24 February

That’s what I reckon that Ronald Brautigam was doing in his all-Beethoven programme to-night by not noticeably using rubato*.

Three well-known sonatas (all of them with probably non-Beethovenian nick-names, as publishers then, amongst others, tried to get you to buy something with a catchy title), played quite straight, plus the Variations on the Eroica theme (Op. 35), which I did not know. (In position in Symphony No. 3, assuming that that work came first, the movement is in variation form.)

With all pieces taken from memory, yes he used variations in tempi between sections (as well as between movements), and contrasted quieter moments with louder ones: the so-called Pathétique, for example, opened with the thunder and explosion of what seems to be the fashion to call ‘a gesture’**.

Not strange when, after all, I think of him as playing the forte piano, where the nature of the instrument leads to a certain way of playing. It was therefore a little odd that the first time that I see him is at the keyboard of a grand piano, but he respected the works that he played by not adding expression, but allowing the expressive quality of the writing itself.

Where the benefit of the grand piano did come to the fore under Brautigam’s playing was in the articulation of motifs that would have sounded very different on a forte piano: there was a precision and clarity in the phrasing of significant passages that made sure that everything was audible, and every note had its full weight.

How such a big name gets invited to play must remain a mystery when the venue is distinctly intimate (not to say quirky), but I am an uncomplaining beneficiary, who next week hopes to see Simon Leper as accompanist***…


End-notes

* In the same way as Alexandre Tharaud on Radio 3 recently (on Wednesday last week, in fact), in his all-Scarlatti first half, broadcast live from the Wigmore Hall: his playing had me so captivated that it kept me listening in the car (and outside the intended destination of the pub), for nigh-on half-an-hour after I had first intercepted it (on the way to said pub).

Apart from attempts from someone to intrude into the sequence with the first beat of intended applause, Tharaud played ten sonatas without a break (I have edited 'Kk.' back to 'K.', because, even if it may be the new convention, everyone knows that the K. numbering credits Ralph Kirkpatrick, its inventor): D minor K. 64, D minor K. 9, C major K. 72, C major K. 132, D major K. 29, E major K. 380, A minor K. 3, C major K. 514, F minor K. 481, D minor K. 141.

I think that his choice of piece and their order owes something to Kirkpatrick's famous study of the allegedly 555 sonatas, so I must take a look...

** Just as the art world has come around to talking about painters and the like ‘making a mark’.

*** To whom, you might well ask, but I have not noticed that name alongside his.


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