Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 5, No. 5 (1931-02)

168 The Phonograph Monthly Review Current Importations The "Hammerklavier" Sonata I T IS good to realize / that Felix Weingartner. one of the foremorst living exponents of Beethoven’s music, should have chosen to transcribe the great “Hammerklavier” sonata (English Columbia LX43-47). Those who are familiar with his book On the Performance of Beethoven’s Symphonies know with what solicitous regard and veneration he has approached the nine symphonies, and with what loving care and attention he has endeavored to assist the interpre- ter to perfect their expression in line and detail. In seeking to improve certain sections of the various works, he has wisely remembered that all “changes should be conducted with the utmost prudence and good taste, since there was a great danger lest the most important thing of all—Beetho- ven’s own peculiar style—might suffer.” For this reason, undoubtedly in transcribing the sonata in B Flat, Opus 106, he adherred to the instruments used in Beethoven’s own orchestras; thereby avoiding distortion of spirit and style. The purists may resent the transcription of this work. They may argue that Beethoven had an orchestra in his day and could have orchestrated this sonata or written it for that most impressive body of instruments if he saw fit, etc. Very likely, from their viewpoint, the argument may prove unanswerable as well as endless. After all, these things are a matter of individual taste, and taste, as we all know, with some people is strangely limited. We, however, com- pletely disagree with the purist’s viewpoint in such matters, for just as we believe many of Bach’s Organ Chorales have been made more impressive in orchestral dress, so we feel this great work has found new and more glorious lights and shades revealed in its poetic beauties by this transcription. The extreme length of the mighty fugue, or final movement, to our way of thinking, is made more forcible in inspiration, more eloquent in its contrapuntal laboriousness. On the piano, we have never thought this work completely im- pressive; even when interpreted by some of the foremost pianists of our day. Somehow its musical abstraction, its emotional profoundly seemed to cry out against the limita- tions of that instrument. There are those who contend that Beethoven was thinking in the terms of an orchestra when he whote his last five sonatas for the piano. And there are those, who feel that he wrote in this work “for an instrument which never existed and never will exist”; since they believe “he moved in an abstract world of music,” playing “not with sounds but with conceptions of sounds, using the language of the piano symbolically.” On the strength of this, we may believe that Weingartner’s excellent transcription is not, nor can it ever be, the ultimate answer for the “Hammerklavier” Sonata. There are those who contend “there is a sort of sense of the invisible and a vision of the infinite, mingled with the power of this composition.” All of this is understandable after we have passed that first acquaintance with this work, and have penetrated its superb depths, its curiously—yet carefullv-moulded loftiness, and its yearning utterance born of a suffering of soul, mind and body. Whether the sustaining powers of the music are truly enhanced by Weingartner’s felicitous transcription, as our first acquaintance would tend us to believe, or not, cannot be immediately decreed. One must perforce, live with a work like this to really sav. Fortunately the reproduc- ing privilege of the records will permit this. We will grow to know whether those writers, who contend that the poetic grandeur of the Adagio will fatigue as well as hold our attention, are right or not; whether the mighty Fugue is really “a magnificent but chaotic mistake—of genius.” Beethoven, we are told, received a grand piano in 1818 from the firm of Broadwood, London manufacturers, and that his enthusiasm for it rekindled the fires of his inspiration toward piano composition. Hence it is universally conceded that, it is not unlikely that he was prompted to compose this sonata by that same piano. We are likewise told that Beethoven had been in the throes of suffering both physical and spiritual for several years when he created this work in 1818-1819. The reflection of that state is undeniably apparent in the music, even though we realize the vigorous genius of the man prevented it from becoming at any time a personal exploitation of his human emotions. His deafness and the worrying nature of outward circumstances, augmented at this time by his ungrateful nephew for whom he bore a tenacious love, must have enveloped him. Unquestionably they had driven him in upon himself, as one writer expresses it, and caused the altered tone apparent in his later works; for they reveal at times an inspirational force which seems to have been forcibly torn from the inner man. , Of the performance of this work and the recording, one can be quite satisfied. Weingartner knows Beethoven—and as we have said—loves him. In the Adagio, he makes us completely conscious of its superb poetry, its inner note of sorrow—seemingly born of a spiritual resignation. Here “is rare music in the fullest sense;” says W. R. Anderson the eminent critic of The Gramophone, “moving in rarefied air, upon a mountain apart.” Our mutual agreement on the transcription is reflected in the sentence which follows— “I feel sure that this great and closely-argued music,” con- tinues Mr. Anderson, “is more richly commended to most in this orchestral form than the piano.” As a result of Weingartner’s transcription of the Fugue, we feel, much has been accomplished to abuse the dissatisfaction voiced by so many writers. As Mr. Anderson writes—it shapes magnifi- cently- at the start, and is full of science whose intimations the orchestra helps one to catch.” The recording seems to us, to be of the best which we have come to know and appreciate from Columbia. That there are limitations in this and all recordings we believe no one will deny, but that this is a fine example of orchestral recreation we also believe no one will deny. Therefore, Columbia deserves unstinted praise for bringing us this great work, so splendidly and so realistically recorded. Peter Hugh Reed Mompou Federico Mompou, who is gradually acquiring recognition as a poet of the keyboard fit to rank in the great succession of composers of piano music, is still little known in this country. George Copeland, Iturbi, and pianists of less fame have introduced some of his pieces, but as yet Mompou’s name is unfamiliar to most concert goers, and the majority of his works are quite unknown even to connoisseurs of modern piano music. Even in the 1929 edition of Pratt’s Diction of Music and Musicians his name is omitted. I am grateful to Mr. William Sewall Marsh for a biographical note, appearing in his invaluable booklet, “Musical Spain.” “Mompou, Federico; Spanish composer, b. Barcelona, 1895. Studied under F. Motte Lacroix. He calls the style of compositions which he has evolver primitivista. He strives for the greatest simplicity of means of expression, and has dispensed with bar divisions, key signatures, and cadences, A French critic states that some of Mompou’s music could be dictated in words without making use of any conventional music-writing method. He has a large Parisian following. Most of his works are in the suite form—all for piano; Canco i Danca; Impressions Intimes; Cants Magics; Subur- bis; Pessebres; Carmes. etc.” The first composition of Mompou to be recorded is the suite of pieces, Cane os i Dancas, Nos. I to 4, each of which occupies one record side (Spanish H. M. V. AA-172 and AA-175). The composer is the pianist. On a third disc— all of them are ten-inch—Mompou plays another composi- tion of his own, Secret, and an original arrangement of Chopin’s Waltz in A minor (AA-177). The Canco i Danca pieces are written without bar lines, except in the second section of No. 2—a charming little air that suggests a French noel or beraerette. Each piece is in two or more divisions, usually of contrasting qualities. The first begins