Search - Ludwig van Beethoven, Paul Badura-Skoda :: Ludwig van Beethoven: The Sonatas for Fortepiano, Vol. 8 - Op. 106 "Hammerklavier" / Op. 101 - Paul Badura-Skoda

Hammerklavier: the Sonata that established its own universe!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 07/03/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Hammerklavier is by far, the most ambitious, expansive and complex among the rest of piano works composed by Beethoven, but such egregious epithets should be analyzed under the somber perspective, the bitterness solitude, taking into account the crisis period the composer is running trough. It is a monumental and even intimidating piece of majuscule proportions, with a marked Symphonic treatment, that must be played under a superhuman tension. Such gigantic dimensions and level of overabundance in what musical ideas concern is symptomatic and profoundly revealing.



To analyze such colossal work it may well surmount the limited space for this brief review, but I would like to emphasize this work is the departure point for his future Sonatas, that underlines the employment of the fugue not mistakenly considered as ornamental function (Beethoven never wrote some useless) as the main vehicle to express his personal attitudes and convictions at this period. The Adagio in spirit is very near respect the musical approach in his String Quartet No.15; immensely introspective, looking inside his cosmic nature where the hero' s agony is far to be expressed with cheap sentimentalism; but with sharp noblesse. As Michelangelo in his last sculptures, the form is not important, the search for beauty is not a priority; Beethoven opens the doors of the perception toward new possibilities of expression, where it may easily perceived the lack of the individual transcendence, which supposes a crisis of universal dimensions, because it supposes a fatal resignation and ominous acceptation that many people consider a true approaching to the religiosity. I think Beethoven is focused in Ulysses' s final return to Ithaca where the music imposes new coordinates of time and space. As a mater of fact, Beethoven had previously remarked this vision in the last variations of his Diabelli.



The Sonata Op. 101 is one the most brilliant Sonatas, plenty of joyous inspiration and

affirmative assertiveness and spring colorful in the second movement that eventually will lead us to this vigorous and expansive final. Badura Skoda made a colossal reading of this piece.



Badura Skoda performed Hammerklavier with such sublime conviction and mesmerizing engagement that hardly will be found in other recordings. He underlines the ugliness of the distorted form, the lack of individuality and so the integration to the cosmos. It' s an Oriental vision of the life, but coming from one of the most representative heralds of the Western thinking, it may not be considered a good new.



Musically this Opus demands from the listener the most absorbing attention due its own nature. But I would not hesitate to include this version among my top ten versions ever recorded.

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