Why did Liszt call the...?!
Question: Hammerklavier sonata 'unplayable'? Did he mean it's unplayable the way it was written or he meant that it was immensely difficult just in terms of technique? I am sort of confused because he certainly wrote pieces that are even worse. Then, why would he say something like that?
Answers: Hammerklavier sonata 'unplayable'? Did he mean it's unplayable the way it was written or he meant that it was immensely difficult just in terms of technique? I am sort of confused because he certainly wrote pieces that are even worse. Then, why would he say something like that?
You have opened up a can of worms, young man <vbg>, that has haunted pianists from the moment that dratted piece 'hit the news reels'. You've got a sharp eye to raise the question at all. Liszt, and the rest of us pianistic mugs, bases the assertion on the first 5 bars of movt I, in many ways. Go back to the score and -- if you are game -- suggest in a supplementary what you think terrorises us weaklings..? :-)
Edit (1 & 2)
Take your time, Al. You've hit on something very important. I'll help you along in just one respect: I cheated with 5 bars, it's all in bar one... (Psst: don't necessarily play it: *think* it!)
No Al, you're not babbling, you're just starting to grapple with what being a musician is all about. I'll give you one more nudge: bar one consists of one sound and a lot of silence. That's the problem.
Edit (3)
(I've added a source for the score to make this easier to follow, and rolled up earlier edits you've already seen, to save space before this runs to a dead sea scroll in length... <s>)
Liszt has every right to mark op.106 as 'unplayable', if that's what he did, as has anyone else. When you take its epic scale into account, the density of argument in all of its parts, as well as the pianistic rigours Beethoven deploys to realise these, it's in some ways hard not to come to another conclusion. For all that, these are in some ways still superficial difficulties: with enough application they can be overcome. That done, the work performed, there arrives a fresh form of 'unplayable': with each subsequent engagement with the piece, fresh difficulties are revealed as the direct result of the previous ones having been overcome. (It's not unlike the peeling of an onion, or unpacking chinese boxes.) Many other works of the highest quality share this characteristic. This kind of 'unplayable', in the end, simply has to be lived with, for there is no real alternative. In effect, each subsequent performance becomes harder than its predecessor, in a progression without end. Finally, there's really 'unplayable', where the most faithful and accurate performance carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. That's where the opening bars of the 1st movt. of op.106 come in.
You already brushed along these difficulties when you queried the rhythm as well as an undesirable waltz-like quality you'd noticed in performances. You should congratulate yourself on that last observation: that 'waltz' quality arises directly from the 'unplayability' we're trying to get to here. Let's go to the text.
First off, the metronome mark. It's Beethoven's own, and it's *fierce*. Set yours to ?=138 and observe how the opening page changes character entirely, musically certainly, but pianistically rather terribly. Debate has gone back and forth whether B's metronome was faulty. I'm not convinced it was at all: if it was, why has there been no similar controversy over the 3rd movt.'s eighth=92 at all? It's like with Alkan's MM-marks: they may be deeply unwelcome pianistically, but that doesn't make them *wrong*. B. has set the bar here and it's mighty high. That's all there is to it. It's up to us to strive to equal it. It also defines a lot of what follows.
When I 'nudged' you yesterday, I mentioned the opening bar as consisting of 'one sound and a lot of silence'. What you see in the score, of course, is merely an up-beat. You can find the 'missing' silence in bar 123, preparing the exposition's repeat. Not only does B. make it pikestaff plain that this silence is a crucial and essential part of his view of the defining characteristics of his first subject, but by implication we must also mentally put this carefully measured silence back in front of the up-beat when we open the work at all. That raises the bar yet again: there is now not a grain of latitude left to us as regards the duration of the opening B-flat eighth of the up-beat! Combined with the MM mark, a comparatively straightforward LH jump has now turned into a death-trap! If we obey B's demands, we risk falling off the opening jump altogether or setting the wrong (too slow) opening speed, or both. Either way we distort or destroy the design. If we bolt for pianistic safety, we *know* we will fail B. altogether from the start. Moreover, we are obliged to do this *twice* to stay faithful to the exposition's repeat. That's what you could call real unplayability, I'd say. When we fail, by lengthening the up-beat LH B-flat to close to a quarter beat, for pianistic greater safety in the jump-off, the resulting distortion causes the waltz-like metre to rise like a spectre at the feast. (The first subject's defining opening gesture will suddenly appear to parse into 2 groups of three quarter beats across the bar lines.) As often as not, when we fail in performance, we also elect to avoid the exposition repeat so as not to have to fall into the same trap twice, thus further undermining B's greater design plans. 'Unplayability' is contageous... :-)
There are many more moments throughout op.106 of equal risk of 'unplayability'; I singled this one out for its defining placement in the work and the singular clarity of the problem itself. Besides, it's without question the one we pianists fear above all others in this work... :-/
Do you have a reference to Liszt saying that?? In fact, Liszt was one of the first to play late works of Beethoven in public: he played the Hammerklavier for the first time in 1821, at the age of 10 (!!) though later he said he played it very badly. He actually took the Hammerklavier sonata on tour.
Of course the piece is horribly difficult and often unpianistic, especially in the last movement. Beethoven wrote some very pianistic pieces for public show (like the sonatas Op 53 (Waldstein) and Op. 57 (Appassionata)) and others because of the ideas he wanted to work out, including the Hammerklavier and Op 101 in A. But the opening of the Hammerklavier is an amazing stroke, and totally pianistic -- I disagree with CubCur's comments.
I can't resist quoting a wonderful anecdote about Liszt playing the slow movement of the Hammerklavier in 1876 at Richard Wagner's home, while Wagner listened from upstairs (1). "[Liszt] spoke especially of the famous Hammerklavier, and more particularly of the fine adagio in F Sharp minor which it contains. In the midst of a sentence he stood up and exclaimed: - 'I will prove it to you!' ... Liszt sat down, and filled our souls with the mysticism of Beethoven's last works.... Liszt seemed once more to have surpassed himself, to have established an inexplicable, direct contact with the dead genius whose interpretation for him was a religious task. When the last bars of the mysterious work had died away, we stood silent and motionless. Suddenly, from the gallery on the first floor, there came a tremendous uproar, and Richard Wagner in his nightshirt came thundering, rather than running, down the stairs. He flung his arms around Liszt's neck and, sobbing with emotion, thanked him in broken phrases for the wonderful gift he had received."