Tuesday, February 15, 2011

2/15 Hammerklavier Orchestrated & w Score / H.J. plays H-K

hammer
Segueing from yesterday's "Hammer-guitarre" post, I recently I found out that Felix Weingartner (the 1st conductor to record B.'s 9 symphonies) did an orchestral arrangement of Beethoven's Opus 106!   I knew of orchestral arrangements of some of the string quartets by Mahler - but this one by Weingartner was one I'd never heard of before. Why is this not more popular?  I'll let you decide....

Piano Sonata #29 In Bb, Op.106, "Hammerklavier" (1818) (Weingartner Orchestral Arrangement)
1. Allegro ("virtually impossible")
2. Scherzo: Assai vivace ("a dark interlude")
3. Adagio sostenuto ("the apotheosis of pain")
4. Introduzione: Largo - Fuga: Allegro risoluto ("dramatic fury and dissonance...terrifying... strangely unstable")
(from wikipedia)

Linklist

I also recently found one of those "score-following" videos - and with a work as monumental as the "Hammerklavier" - that can be really handy....(sequenced by snicolosi85)

Linklist

Finally, here's Hyun-Jung Lim (H.J. Lim) doing the ending fugue of the Hammerklavier.  I only just discovered her playing on Youtube and frankly her interpretations are astounding and fresh!  It's always good to hear new approaches to Beethoven and her's is very modern to my ears.  Apparently she adheres very closely to Beethoven's original metronome markings - much more so than most "traditional" pianists.  Certainly a new favorite of mine and I hope she records all of Beethoven's piano works at some point....Brendel's done it 3 times already...

Ms. Lim performs the 1st movement here.

Of course there's always the classic Brendel performance...
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3 comments:

  1. Yari OstovanyFebruary 17, 2011 at 12:49 PM

    Good to come across your blog!

    This is something that I wrote about this recording:

    http://opus125arts.blogspot.com/2008/12/weingartners-orchestration-of_12.html

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  2. Ed ChangFebruary 17, 2011 at 5:16 PM

    Thanks for stopping by Yari - I read your post about the Weingertner - I agree with what you wrote. It's a very admirable arrangement tho, and it's interesting how Weingartner distributes the orchestration in the 4th movement fugue. But yes, the Mahler arrangement of the Serioso quartet for string ensemble is much more successful...

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  3. FaustoAugust 12, 2016 at 8:44 AM

    HJ Lim Hammerklavier execution is really awesome! I hope she will do the same as Brendel, it could be very interesting repeat it when you are getting older (like Glenn Gould with Goldberg).

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