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First, to settle
the controversy over the release of this disc, this is NOT a new
recording but an extraordinarily worthwhile one nonetheless. Piotr
Anderszewski originally made this recording, his first, for Polish
Accord in 1996, six years after he had walked out of the Leeds Piano
Competition. That event was a controversy in itself. He had played
Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations brilliantly and was halfway through
the Webern Variations when he suddenly stopped playing and walked
out of the hall.
As Anderszewski
himself phrased it the liner notes,
"Agents threw
themselves on me and the press got up a campaign on my behalf.
They should have suspected that I was someone with problems and
left me alone."
In some ways this
disc can be taken not only as superlative music making but also as
Anderszewski’s exorcism of inner demons from the trauma of the Leeds
experience. That would make it no coincidence that the heart of
this recording is Beethoven’s Op 110 sonata, a piece that was for
its composer a similar probing and overcoming of psychic and
spiritual turmoil on a deep and highly personal level.
As he showed in
his recording of the Diabelli Variations (read
the review here), Anderszewski can
not only get under the composer’s skin but also delve into his
psyche with a maturity and insight far beyond his years. Leonard
Bernstein used to say that whenever he was on the podium, he
conducted with the ideal of becoming the composer whose music he was
performing. Anderszewski does exactly this with Op 110. He plays
it as though he is Beethoven, experiencing the music first-hand and
improvising as he is going along instead of performing something
written down for almost 200 years. It is maybe no surprise then, as
the liner notes state, that Anserszewski would eventually like to
conduct the Missa Solemnis, the piece with which Beethoven felt the
closest bond and through which he bared his soul as he did in no
other work.
 When he wrote Opp
109, 110 and 111 in 1820, Beethoven (right) was in the midst of a deep
spiritual crisis, something he had been working out in his personal
faith compositionally through the Missa. Those last three sonatas
are really emotional and spiritual snapshots of what was churning
within himself. While we do not have without Beethoven himself to
interview about what he was feeling while he was composing these
works or the Missa, consider the timeline involved. Beethoven had
finished the Kyrie and Gloria of the Missa and interrupted work on
the Credo to compose Opp 109-111. The text of the Credo is
basically Romans 10:9-10, which is not only a touchstone of
Christianity in general but a direct and highly personal cornerstone
of faith:
I believe in
one God, the Father almighty
Maker of heaven and earth
And of
all things visible and invisible.
(And) in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only-begotten Son of God
Born of the Father before all ages:
God of God, light of light, true God of true God;
begotten not
made; consubstantial with the Father;
by Whom all things were
made.
Who for us men, and for our salvation,
came from heaven;
and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost, of the Virgin Mary; and was
made man.
He was crucified also for us, suffered under Pontius
Pilate, and was buried.
And on the third day He rose again
according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven.
He sitteth
at the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again with
glory to judge the living and the dead; and His Kingdom shall have
no end.
I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the Lord and giver of life,
who proceedeth from the Father and the Son,
Who together with the
Father and the Son is adored and glorified; Who spoke by the
Prophets.
I believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic Church.
I
confess one baptism for the remission of sins. And I await the
resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
Amen.
According to the liner notes for the
Levine/Salzburg recording of the Missa (and mentioned in other
sources) Beethoven's faith was a highly personal but conflicted one,
with Christianity, the philosophy of the Enlightenment and Eastern
religious philosophy colliding in his mind and spirit. He wrote of
God as "my refuge, my rock" in his personal diary of 1812-18 while
also quoting passages from Eastern sources. Beethoven was a
contradiction in other ways as well. He was a purported lover of
humanity who acted like a self-absorbed misanthrope. He was given
to rages over the most minor of human foibles yet could look on
those tirades with humorous detachment. (Is it any surprise that
one of his wittiest compositions is titled “Rage Over a Lost Penny,
Stormed Out in a Caprice”?) An alcoholic father mentally and
physically abused Beethoven as a child yet, in the pattern of many
who are abused, the composer became an oppressive and overly
protective guardian to his nephew Karl. He was petty, childish,
unforgiving, a continual whiner about his circumstances and not the
most honest businessman when it came to his compositions, yet he
wrote some of the loftiest music in human history. Plus Beethoven
was in continual torment over his deafness, which at this point had
become nearly total. Inner demons the man had in plenty.
It is interesting that Beethoven stopped work on the Missa just at
the point that, in terms of Romans 10:9-10, he would have to have
had to come to terms with himself in his heart and commit or perhaps
reaffirm himself to a personal relationship with his Lord and
Savior. It might have taken a lot of inner reflection, a dealing
with inner demons and a realization that he could not go on in the
way he had, that he had to surrender himself to the leading of an
inner power. Considering all the testimonies of people who have
claimed to have become Christians through various personal trials,
and considering how seriously and intensely Beethoven apparently
believed in the words he set to music in the Missa from the finished
product, the suggestion that he had such a similarly personal
revelation does not seem that outlandish. It is not that much
further a stretch to suggest that he would also express his personal
wrestling match with himself, his emotions and his faith in Op
109-111, perhaps not overtly but as a matter of course from
expressing himself directly and personally in his music as a whole.
In other words, we may not
have an interview with Beethoven to confirm all of this but there
are enough clues to make an educated case for it.
This seems to be exactly how Anderszewski
approaches Op 110 – with a sense of deep internal crisis and
introspection leading to revelation. Some complain that the first
movement as Beethoven wrote it sounds anemic and meandering, and
lacks the grandeur of Beethoven's other great sonatas. But it is
not meant to be a grand statement. It is a quiet and very lyrical
beginning much in the same vein as Op 101. Does the beginning of Op
101 meander? Or the begining of the Moonlight, for that matter?
Seems like Beethoven is beginning in what would be a familiar manner
for him in that movement. Part of Beethoven's genius was that he
could be so moving and communicate so much in the quieter moment of
his works as well as the "great" ones.
When the piece modulates into the minor key,
the sunniness of the opening is increasingly bathed in shadows, then
dusk. Even as Beethoven tries to continue smiling, the calm with
which he started is eroding fast. It is one of the subtlest yet
most pervasive and devastating moments in the composer’s output, as
complex as anything in the late Mozart piano concertos or the last
sonatas of Schubert, with several layers of emotions running
independent of and into one another all at the same time. The
character of this movement as it progresses is more than a rising
level of tragedy; it is a psychic unraveling the likes of which we
have never heard in Beethoven’s output before now. And as it
progresses, this music becomes an increasingly easy place to fall
into melodrama or to overplay with the fervor of the Hammerklavier
or Appassionata. Anderszewski understands the difference here. He
knows that this opening movement is infinitely more intricate and
multifaceted; instead of onward and forward, we are going inward,
becoming increasingly, almost obsessively ruminative. Time has
literally come to a standstill. Anderszewski plays this music
more like the Schubert B flat major sonata than what many of us are
used to – never really slow but lingering, tinged instead of steeped
with regrets and longings, with nothing overstated but every
sentiment laid bare and nothing resolved.
The arioso dolente that follows this
movement is no rustic dance or light interlude in Anderszewski’s
hands. It is a danse macabre, a whirling, vicious affair
with jabbing accents and no let-up until the final bars, when the
nightmare finally fades in the first moments of waking.
Anderszewski slows the pace and softens his tone in those final
measures – a highly effective transition as well as highlighting
musically the thought most of have had after an especially bad
dream: “Thank God it’s morning.”
The opening of the final movement moves on from “Thank God it’s
morning” to “Oh God, it’s morning” – the second thought that can
come when life look especially bad. The final movement is the
spiritual and emotional core of the work – Beethoven groping in the
dark until the light breaks in with a repeated chord leading to the
final fugue. That chord, played over and over a little louder each
time until the piano is practically shaking, has been called by some
one of the most absurd moments in all of classical music. It is
really Beethoven’s moment of epiphany, his personal breakthrough
leading to the uninhibited joy of the final measures. As in the
first movement, Anderszewski’s interpretation is phenomenal. He
traces the emotional and musical peaks and valleys with sensitivity,
conviction and immediacy both fresh and a little startling to hear.
For once the ending of this piece is not just another triumphant
conclusion but a moment of cleansing and catharsis, perhaps for
Anderszewski as well as for Beethoven.
 How appropriate it is to have
Bach’s D minor English suite precede
the Beethoven as an opener. This is some of the most thoughtful,
penetrating Bach I have heard in a long time, with each line of
counterpoint given not only its own voice but individual
characteristics. The music becomes as much conversation as it does
musical exchange and interplay, never predictable but always
fresh-sounding, as though it, like the Beethoven, is being
improvised on the spot. It is occasionally very moving but never
overdone, from the wistful bittersweetness of the courante and
sarabande to the humorously tongue-in-cheek quality of the second
gavotte (which shows that yes, Bach did have a sense of humor after
all). Anderszewski gives the music ample time to breathe but never
drags or forces it into a hypermanic state, and treats it without
any starch of pomposity. Everything fits.
(above: J.S. Bach)
Above all, Anderszewswki never forgets that
these movements are dances. Accents are kept pointed, rhythms
lively and no matter what speed, to borrow Duke Ellington’s phrase,
everything swings. The wonderfully soulful way Anderszewski opens
the prelude – an introspective searching not far removed from the
Beethoven – gives way to highly animated and high-spirited play,
with Anderszewski reveling in the polyphony and melody while keeping
the music sprightly and light-footed. The rest of the suite is
treated just as nimbly. All this from someone who says Bach “was
not really my thing” when he recorded it.
 The
Webern, on the other hand, was very much
Anderszewski’s thing, a hangover from Leeds that he plays here with
the searching intensity he brought to Bach and Beethoven plus a
volcanic, white-hot passion that takes the listener by the throat.
I’d never realized the connection between this work and the
Beethoven until hearing them side by side in this recording. Webern
and Beethoven both begin with a searching first movement, follow it
with a spiky, aggressive middle episode and progress to a third
movement that penetrates even more deeply into the human psyche,
continually questioning, answering, then questioning the answers.
In Webern, though, the final notes are both resolute and
inconclusive. It is a double-sided message that mirrors life itself
as a continual and perhaps in some ways never-ending quest.
above: Anton Webern
Overall this disc is everything it promises to be and a tremendous
amount more. The liner notes call Anderszewski’s Bach “an adventure
in sound,” but the performances as a whole are incisive and
insightful musical explorations of the soul and spirit as well. It
not only needs to be heard to be believed, but virtually demands it.
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