Beethoven: Sonata No.31 in A-flat Major, Op.110 (Lortie, Siirala, Kovacevich)

The most warmly lyrical of all of Beethoven’s late sonatas, and probably my favourite of all 32.

Why? Well, to start with the obvious: In a late sonata, where you’d expect ambiguity, radical structural innovation, gnarled counterpoint – a conventional 1st movement, with a theme so simple and unadorned [0:18] its only warrant, really, is its beauty. The development is not just simple but consciously minimalist, and the shift to and from E Maj in the recapitulation [3:36; 4:09] is exquisitely beautiful.

There is also the structural tightness of the sonata. The opening bars of the sonata become the subject of the first fugue in the last movement, and, in an inverted form, the subject of the second fugue also. The opening phrase of the 2nd movement scherzo [6:24] also becomes transformed into the arioso of the final movement [10:26]. So Beethoven does not just shift the focus of the sonata form from first movement to last, or even use the final movement to unify the other two – in this sonata, the final movement is where the themes presented in other two really take flight, and the final movement is almost entirely built around material already presented.

Also, that last movement. It features the most sophisticated use of counterpoint of all 32 sonatas: not because the contrapuntal writing is ingenious (which it is, but Sonatas No.28 + 29 have got that too), but because the counterpoint is used (maybe for the first time in musical history) as part of a dramatic narrative. The final movement is basically a struggle between the arioso theme, which is not merely sad but crushingly hopeless (dolente = painful, aching, ermattet = exhausted) to the point of its literally breaking up the second time it’s presented, and the fugue, which radiates an inner strength and consolation.

In the end, the fugue wins, but in an extraordinary way. The second fugue does not merely achieve a triumphant shape: it burns itself out of existence. As the texture thickens and intensifies with inversions and simultaneous presentations of augmentations and diminuitions [57:30], suddenly there are just two voices duelling in ecstasy [57:53, with the shift to 2 voices at 58:05], incessantly reaching higher, and then suddenly there is just one voice, the main theme pouring out in a great chorale [58:19]. It’s my favourite moment in all the 32 sonatas – a theme that leaps out of its own chasm of counterpoint, and when finally freed rings with a kind of joy which should be impossible after the arioso but somehow isn’t. And because the fugue theme is really the opening bars of the entire sonata, the sonata has an open-ended, cyclic form, with the basic movement over the entire piece being from lyricism (the opening) to hope (the final bars).

MVT I
EXPOSITION
00:00 – Theme 1
00:41 – Transition (a highly abstracted form of the melody that just preceded it)
01:05 – Theme (Group) 2
02:12 –DEVELOPMENT (Note how compressed it is, and how reliant on counterpoint)
03:03 – RECAPITULATION (Theme 1 is combined with the Transition theme in the LH)
05:59 – CODA

MVT II
06:24 – Scherzo
07:04 – Trio (Cleverly constructed out of large upward leaps and downward descents: Beethoven’s manuscript shows he struggled a lot working out of figuration of this section)
07:31 – Scherzo
08:13 – CODA/transition

MVT III
08:30 – INTRODUCTION
10:26 – ARIOSO (the melody is built from the downward gesture that opens the scherzo)
12:52 – FUGA I (The fugue subject is built from an ascending chain of fourths, and is derived from the sonata’s opening phrase. The countersubject is built from a descending chain of fourths.)
15:13 – ARIOSO (note how the melody is broken up, “sobbing”)
18:00 – FUGA II (The fugue subject is a straightforward inversion of the first fugue’s subject. If there was any doubt about the narrative structure of this movement Beethoven has marked this section wieder auflebend = again reviving, poi a poi di nuovo vivente = little by little with renewed vigour)
18:23 – The subject of the first fugue enters the fray in the lowest voice, in diminished form and with a different rhythmic emphasis. Immediately after, the first fugue subject also enters in the top voice, but this time in augmented form.
18:48 – A double diminuition of the first fugue subject is introduced, with a relaxing of the tempo which generates the effect of a gradual *increase* in tempo
18:53 – The subject of the second fugue enters in middle voice.
19:01 – The subject of the first fugue enters in bass. Effectively two voices left. The double diminuition becomes transformed into a decorative figure in RH.
19:15 – FINALE: Homophonic chorale. The theme escapes.

Видео Beethoven: Sonata No.31 in A-flat Major, Op.110 (Lortie, Siirala, Kovacevich) канала Ashish Xiangyi Kumar