MiV Home
Phillip T Young Recital Hall
February 19, 2016
After completing his final piano sonata, Beethoven famously remarked that the piano was, after all, "an unsatisfactory instrument".
While remarking, parenthetically, that this opinion did not prevent him from going on to compose the great "Diabelli" Variations and the Op.126 set of Bagatelles, we can understand it in the context of his early reputation as a destroyer of pianos, his deafness and the actual nature of the pianos available during his lifetime - the iron-framed behemoth was not patented until 1843.
Satisfactory or not, it was with the piano that Beethoven made his reputation in Vienna and his thirty-two piano sonatas constitute his largest output in any genre.
Bruce Vogt closed his recital on Friday night with a superb performance of Beethoven's penultimate sonata, Op.110 in A flat. This was the only work which Beethoven completed in 1821 - the autograph is dated Christmas Day - although he was also working on the Missa Solemnis and Ninth Symphony during that year. It is also curious, as Eric Blom has pointed out, that "so deeply personal a work as this Sonata should bear no dedication".
Tempos were well-chosen, with a subtle rubato which one felt was always at the service of the music, rather than the pianist's ego (would that this were always the case). The arioso third movement had a sense of profound concentration and beautiful cantabile, while the final fugue, taken at a flowing tempo, if less exuberant than some I have heard, nevertheless provided a wonderfully satisfying conclusion to the sonata and the recital.
Vogt closed the first half of his programme with a much earlier sonata, Op.10 No.3 composed some time between 1796 and 1798. Of this sonata Blom writes that it is "so great an advance towards a more individual mastery that one wishes it had been published under an opus number of its own".
This sonata contains rather more of Beethoven's bluff - even, at times, uncouth - humour and Vogt captured that aspect of the music extremely well, from his "let's get on with this" way with the opening to the final, cheeky, close. I did feel that perhaps the slow movement was a little too "late Beethoven" in outlook, but was impressed by Vogt's seemingly effortless crescendos, producing a weighty fortissimo without a hint of clangour.
We know that Joseph Haydn wrote over sixty keyboard "sonatas" - although around half of them were designated as "partita" or "divertimento" - yet, as Martin Cooper points out "hardly more than half a dozen figure regularly in recitalists' programmes".
We should, therefore, be grateful to Vogt for including two sonatas not of that select half-dozen to round out his recital on Friday.
Opening the concert was the A flat sonata Hob.XVI:46. It is probably worth mention at this point that the numbering of the sonatas in Anthony van Hoboken's catalogue is no more reliable than this numbering of the early symphonies and that H.C Robbins Landon numbered this sonata as thirty-one. (And that numbers twenty-one to twenty-seven are lost.)
Perhaps this is not "deep" music, but my word it is civilised! In the first movement, the busy-ness of the right hand called to mind the harpsichord music that was only beginning to make way for what we now call the fortepiano. The slow movement was poised and concentrated - and, must be said, absolutely gorgeous - whereas the finale was simply jolly in the way that only Haydn can be.
The C minor sonata Hob.XVI:20, numbered thirty-three by Robbins Landon, dates from no more than four years after the A flat and was the first such work that Haydn actually designed "sonata".
The opening movement displayed dignity in the face of adversity - Cooper calls it "almost Brahmsian" - and Vogt provided some delectable tonal colours in the development section. The slow movement was quite lovely whereas the finale offered no false consolation.
When this recital was announced as "Bruce Vogt plays the late Beethoven sonatas" I had anticipated hearing my favourite, Op.109.
Alas, it was not to be, but in the light of what was on the programme - two outstanding Beethoven sonatas and two marvellously-played, insufficiently-heard sonatas by Haydn - I am more than prepared to forgive the lacuna.
Oh yes, and the encore, a delectable short piece by Liszt, simply put the delicious icing on a most nourishing cake.
A tremendously rewarding evening.
MiV Home