Hélène Grimaud: Two Last Classical Sonatas

1823 painting of Ludwig van Beethoven by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, the San Francisco Symphony Great Performers Series presented its latest program, a solo piano recital by Hélène Grimaud. The program consisted of the final piano sonatas by the last two composers in the First Viennese School, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert. The former was the Opus 111 sonata in C minor, consisting of only two movements. The intermission was followed by the four full (not to mention extended) movements of Schubert’s D. 960 sonata in B-flat major.

Opus 111, composed in 1822, greets the attentive listener with a rhetorical stance that almost verges on stream of consciousness. The opening Maestoso begins with a jolt, presumably to get the listener’s attention. This leads into the turbulent Allegro con brio ed appassionato. Grimaud knew exactly how to weather this storm, delivering all of the necessary intensity without overplaying the structure. The second movement is an extended approach to variations on an Arietta theme. Grimaud clearly appreciated the rhetorical stance of each of those variations, guiding the attentive listener through a journey well worth taking. One might almost say that Beethoven would have been delighted with her interpretation of this music had it not been for his deafness and his death almost two centuries ago!

This seems to be “The Year of D. 960.” This past April Richard Goode selected it for the second half of the piano recital he prepared for a San Francisco Performances program. On that occasion, I wrote about my personal attachment to this music (which does not need repetition). This was also a Beethoven-Schubert program; and, again, the Beethoven selection was from his late period, Opus 120, entitled “33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli.”

From a personal point of view, I cannot get enough of D. 960, particularly after my many efforts to get the right keys under my fingers. Some readers may recall that this was music I took with me on my trip to Seattle to see a “Ring Cycle” performance. Fortunately, my hotel was next door to a shopping mall that happened to have a grand piano on the ground floor. Anyone was free to sit down and play; and I began every morning by working my way through D. 960, receiving occasional nods of recognition from passers-by! With a context like that, I found that, last night, I could relish every note that Grimaud played over the entire course of the sonata.

Grimaud limited her performance to two encores. The first of these was a personal favorite: “La cathédrale engloutie.” This is the tenth piece in Claude Debussy’s first book of preludes, published in 1910; and Grimaud knew exactly how to capture the mystical rhetoric of the music. This was followed by a barrage of notes probably composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff, but I have yet to identify the source of those notes!