Day 15

Hello! Two Videos again - no pdf’s.

About M.emory

Practicing M.emory

Downloads:
Nothing today :)

Today’s Recommended Listening:

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Sonata for Cello and Piano, op. 69: I. Allegro ma non troppo
Pieter Wispelwey, cello & Paul Komen, fortepiano
[Spotify] - 13 minutes

Yeah, so… Beethoven. As Daniel Pesca put it, dude set the impossible bar for all other composers: first, he was the best ever. Then, he worked harder than anyone else. Then, he went deaf and kept getting better. Honestly, with as famous as he is under-rated.

He wrote 9 symphonies, 18 quartets, 32 piano sonatas, 10 violin sonatas, 5 piano concertos, a violin concerto, a Triple Concerto for Violin/Cello/Piano, a bunch of piano trios, etc etc etc. There’s so much music history to dive into, but I’ll present this:

Beethoven ushered in the romantic era of music with his Symphony #3 “Eroica” which was an homage to Napoleon - who wasn’t a crazy conquerer just yet. We literally learn in music school that that’s the moment when we go from classical to romantic era.

This is super cool - he wrote five cello sonatas. Two are published as op. 5, one is op. 69, two are op. 102. So we have two early works, one middle, and two late works. It’s nice that we have “so much” written by him for the cello and piano (compare to Brahms, Saint-Saens, Fauré… each wrote two sonatas only).

We’re back to Pieter Wispelwey. Listen to the different sound of his cello… and it’s not a modern piano where the hammer hits the stings from the bottom (a pianoforte) but a Beethoven-era piano where the hammer hts the strings from the top (a fortepiano). Such a wild and different sound. Yes, everyone recorded these. I mean everyone. But this recording really opened my ears to what it meant to be HIP (that is, a Historically-Informed Performer).

What to explore next:

  1. Beethoven | The other sonatas [Wispelwey, of course]

  2. Beethoven | Symphony #5 [Szell/Cleveland - but really listen]

  3. Sofia Gubaidulina | The Canticle of the Sun for Cello/Percussion/Choir [Wispelwey]

See you tomorrow!
—Eric