Late Beethoven II A Mixture of inner Strength and Heartfeld Emotion

Dina Ugorskaja: “Beethoven catapulted the genre forward, leaving 19th- and even 20th-century composers with a number of important innovations they could build upon. Of his late sonatas, only the Hammerklavier is written in the typical four-movement format (apart from op.101, whose first movement is nevertheless not a typical sonata allegro). Otherwise, each of these works is structured quite unconventionally, suggesting that they are through-composed, i.e. conceived as a continuum that runs through all the movements. After the formidable, almost diabolically daunting Hammerklavier sonata (where musical excess bursts all bounds in terms of movement length, in terms of harmonic density and also the incredible polyphonic intricacy in the final fugue or in the first movement’s development section fugato), Beethoven took a breather in the genre. When he returned to it in opp. 109, 110 and 111, he managed to create an entirely new sonata format. In those last three sonatas he placed a new emphasis on simplicity, on distilled purity, on new types of contrast, abrupt changes, opening and expanding the sonority into new landscapes of transfiguration. I find this radical turning point best illustrated in the String Quartet op.132; I’m thinking about the movement in Lydian style. He calls it A Sacred Song of Thanks from One Made Well – the chorale style, the “white” colour, the wisdom... in this respect, even the two-movement piano sonata op.90 is already a forerunner of the last three.” (Excerpt from a conversation with Dieter Rexroth (Music Journalist) and Dina Ugorskaja for this booklet)