Beethoven: Piano Sonata in C Minor, Op. 111 [Excerpts]

By Erik Petersons on June 11, 2017.

Beethoven leaves behind a musical track record of unrelenting confrontations....But the reason we care about these works is not that they express irreconcilable contradictions or exile. Rather, each constructs an alternative universe in which something is actually being understood about our world: some things are rejected, some are accepted, some are greeted with horror, some with resignation. Beethoven's late music, for example, embraces incongruities because—we are convinced—that is precisely what it means to see the world whole. There is accumulated knowledge here: recognition and reconciliation, not just 'intransigence' or 'unresolved contradiction.'

Late style expresses a sense of being out of place and time: it is a rejection of what is being offered. But listen to Beethoven or Strauss or Gould: the music is more like a discovery of place. That place is different from where one started; it may not even be what was once expected or desired. But it is there, in resignation and fulfillment, that late works take their stand, where even exile meets its end.

—Edward Rothstein, Twilight of His Idols, New York Times, 2006

The second installment in the project podcast series explores the late style of Bach and Beethoven in contrast with how we perceive this phenomenon in 20th-century composers.

This work was performed on the first concert of PCMS' Departure & Discovery Project at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater.